Bakelai

Bakelai, a numerous Bantu people of the Gaboon and Ogoway basins, chiefly between the coast and the Crystal Mountains, reached their present domain from the north-east about 1825, when they drove out the former inhabitants (Shekianis), but are now in their turn pressed upon by the Fans advancing from the north-east. The Bakelai are great traders, and their language (Dikelai) has become the lingua franca of the Ogoway regions, and been reduced to writing by American missionaries, who have published A Grammar of the Bakelai Language, with Vocabulary, New York, 1854.