A history, real and/or imagined
In the early 1400’s Portuguese mariners, urged on by Prince Henry the Navigator from his famous naval school at Sagres in southern Portugal, began a series of voyages that would lead to the discovery of the sea-route to India, to Malacca and the Spice Islands, and ultimately to China and Japan. The names in the history books epitomize Portugal’s Golden Age – Vasco da Gama, Bartolomeu Dias, Diogo Cão, Gil Eanes, Afonso d’Albuquerque, Jorge Álvares. These are some of the famous seafarers who made those daring and dangerous voyages into the unknown, at a time when maps and charts were primitive and warned of sea-monsters, when men thought that a giant named Adamastor guarded the edges of the maritime world, and that the ocean near the equator would boil.
It is surprising that these famous men never made a discovery that was named after them. The places they visited, and where they erected carved stone pillars (padrãos) to commemorate their landing, were typically named for the saint whose feast day it was, or a local topographic feature, or an item of flora or fauna seen along the way. The discoverers appeared to have been modest men, at least when it came to naming the places they discovered.
There are, however, a couple of notable exceptions. Their names are Tristão da Cunha and Fernão do Pó.
Tristão da Cunha was an admiral. Sailing in the South Atlantic on his way to India, be came upon three islands. The largest of these, a volcanic cone 2000 meters high, is even today called Tristan da Cunha. Along with some other remote and desolate island groups in the South Atlantic, it remains a part of the once-global possessions of then-great Britain. In 1961 the volcano erupted, causing the inhabitants to evacuate to Britain. Some three hundred later returned, making a living from fishing, canning, and the sale of postage stamps. (Tristão da Cunha the admiral was an emissary to the Papal court, and his son Nuno, who captured Basra in what is today’s Iraq, was appointed governor of India.)
Fernão do Pó (or Fernando Po) is another Portuguese mariner who gave his name to an island. Reaching the Gulf of Guinea at the point where the African coast again turns southward, Fernão and his men found a river full of shrimp (really a kind of crayfish) and so they called it Rio dos Camarões, River of Shrimps. The river today is known by its native name, Wouri, but the country there has been called Cameroon – in one spelling or another – ever since Fernão’s crewmen had their fill of shrimp. The main topographic feature in the country is Mount Cameroon. Fernando Po the island later came under Spanish control, along with a small parcel of real estate on the mainland called Río Muni. Of the later career of Fernão do Pó, mariner, not very much is known.
Through the ensuing centuries, Cameroon was occupied by different European colonial powers. France, Britain, and Germany controlled it at various times – the French spelt it Cameroun, and the Germans, Kamerun. Under German control, Kamerun was known also as German West Africa. After the First World War, the two biggest colonial powers in Africa, France and Britain, signed an agreement dividing Kamerun between them. So for a while it became the Cameroons, British and French. In 1960 French Cameroon gained independence to become the République de Cameroun. In British Cameroon a year later they had a vote; the northern part aligned itself with newly-independent Nigeria, and the southern part with the new république.
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The history of dice is a very old one, going way back to the ancient civilizations of Sumer and Egypt. The Greeks and Romans also were fond of rolling dice. Julius Caesar made important decisions (such as whether to cross the Rubicon) on a roll of the bones. Roman soldiers at the Crucifixion gambled (presumably with dice) for Christ’s bloodstained robe.
There is a dice game for two to ten players, using ten dice, a dice cup (usually a leather-bound one well-conditioned with the sweat from many hands), and a score sheet. The maximum number of points in this game is 214, and it works something like this – 5 points for 5 Aces, 10 points for 5 deuces, 15 for 5 treys, etc., 21 points for a low straight (1-2-3-4-5-6), 30 points for a high straight (2-3-4-5-6), 28 points for a full house, and 30 points for a five-of-a-kind. It is a dice game with poker undertones that in times past was popular in social clubs. The game is known as Cameroons.
What might be the connection between Cameroon the country and Cameroons the dice game? It is a fair question, but one for which our research has not yet come up with a clear answer.
Still, it is not too difficult to imagine a scene in Equatorial Africa in 1919. A French colonial administrator and his British counterpart sit down to dine at the former’s residence in Douala. Their job is to decide what to do about the new colony their governments have jointly inherited through an agreement of the League of Nations.
Having vanquished their common German enemy in The War To End All Wars, Britain and France must now define the boundaries of their new possession. How to do so in a gentlemanly way? A game of billiards, perhaps? No, that is hardly a suitable method to settle such complex matters as water and mineral rights, forest resources, population shifts, access to the excellent German-built railway.
A game of chess, then? No, again that would be too simple; one side wins, the other loses. They refill their brandy snifters, light up cigars.
The Frenchman has an idea. It is too great a responsibility for just two people to decide these important issues, n’est-ce pas? Might he suggest the participation of five members of the respective staffs on either side, one for each of the issues to be decided. He proposes a dice game such as that he had played while a cadet at St. Cyr. At the end of the game the points are added for each of the several issues. One side wins on one, the other side may win on another. No one really loses. Paris and London will be none the wiser. The Englishman concedes by saying, jolly good, but do tell, what is this dice game called? Ah, the Frenchman says, since we are dividing one Cameroon into two, let us call it simply Cameroons.
D’accord? 2
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1.Magellan (Fernão de Magalhães) was of course sailing under the patronage of the King of Spain, so he does not count. Besides, he sailed southward off the east coast of South America, and found a way into the Pacific Ocean through the strait that still bears his name. An archipelago named Fernando de Noronha lies off the northeastern coast of Brazil, with a fort whose name is Fortaleza dos Remédios (an interesting bit of trivia for those with that last name). On the main island are both a national park and a penitentiary (à la the old Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay).
There is another group of islands in the Indian Ocean called the Mascarenes (named for a certain Mascarenhas); they are Mauritius, Reunion, and (after another Portuguese discoverer) Rodrigues. We shall leave their story for another time.
2.The history books tell us that the French ended up with four-fifths of the territory and the British only one-fifth.
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