Cameroon (often Cameroons; in German spelt Kamerun), a German colony on the west coast of Africa, extending from the Rio del Rey, a little east of the Old Calabar River, southwaixls to a point slightly below 3" N. lat., where it is bounded by French Congo. On the north-west, the boundary is a line from the Rio del Rey to near Yola on the Benue, and thence to Lake Chad. The eastern boundary is understood to be about the meridian 15° E. This would make Adamawa and part of Bagirmi the 'Hinterland' of Cameroon. But the arrangements, on this head and as to the boundary towards the interior agreed on by Germany and Britain in 1893, were hotly contested by the French. The area has beim estimated at 190,000 sq. m., and the pop. at 3,500,000. The name is derived from the Cameroon River (Port. camaruo, 'a shrimp'), which enters the Bight of Biafra opposite Fernando Po by an estuary over 20 miles wide. The low mangrove swamps that clothe its banks render the climate very trying to Europeans; but much of the interior is high-lying and healthy. The natives belong to the Bantu group, the Duallas living nearest the coast. In 1884 the German flag was hoisted at Cameroon, and by 1893 the revenue decidedly exceeded the expenditure. The country is very fertile; ebony, red-wood, and palm-trees clothing the Cameroon, which also has long been noted as an 'oil river,' and for its cotton and ivory; while many tropical fruits grow wild. North-west of the estuary lie the Cameroon Mountains, a volcanic group, which attain a height of 13,746 feet in the peak Mongo ma Lobah ('mount of the gods '), first scaled by Burton and Mann in 1862.