The
Greater Part Of These Plantations Consist Of Clearing And Taking
Care Of The Wild Coffee, But In Addition Regularly Planting And
Cultivating Young Trees, As It Is Found That The Yield Per Tree Is
Immensely Increased By Cultivation.
Six hundred to eight hundred bags a month were shipped from
Ambrizette alone when I was there in 1893,
And the amount has since
increased and will still further increase when that leisurely, but
very worthy little railroad line, which proudly calls itself the
Royal Trans-African, shall have got its sections made up into the
coffee district. It was about thirty miles off at Ambaca when I was
in Angola, but by now it may have got further. However, I do not
think it is very likely to have gone far, and I have a persuasion
that that railroad will not become trans-African in my day; still it
has an "immediate future" compared with that which any other West
Coast railway can expect; for besides the coffee, Angola is rich in
malachite and gum of high quality, and its superior government will
attract the rubber from the Kassai region of the Congo Free State.
In our own possessions the making of plantations is being carried on
with much energy by Messrs. Miller Brothers on the Gold Coast, {468}
by several private capitalists, including Mr. A. L. Jones of
Liverpool, at Lagos; by the Royal Niger Company in their territory,
and by several head Agents in the Niger Coast Protectorate. Sir
Claude MacDonald offered every inducement to this trade development,
and gave great material help by founding a botanical station at Old
Calabar, where plants could be obtained. He did his utmost to try
and get the natives to embark on plantation-making, ably seconded by
Mr. Billington, the botanist in charge of the botanical station, who
wrote an essay in Effik on coffee growing and cultivation at large
for their special help and guidance. A few chiefs, to oblige, took
coffee plants, but they are not enthusiastic, for the slaves that
would be required to tend coffee and keep it clean, in this vigorous
forest region, are more profitably employed now in preparing palm
oil.
Of the coffee plantation at Man o' War Bay I have already spoken,
and of those in Congo Francais, which, although not at present
shipping like the German plantation, will soon be doing so. In
addition to coffee and cacao attempts are being made in Congo
Francais to introduce the Para rubber tree, a large plantation of
which I frequently visited near Libreville, and found to be doing
well. This would be an excellent tree to plant in among coffee, for
it is very clean and tidy, and seems as if it would take to West
Africa like a duck to water, but it is not a quick cropper, and I am
informed must be left at least three or four years before it is
tapped at all, so, as the gardening books would say, it should be
planted early.
It is very possible many other trees producing tropical products
valuable in commerce might be introduced successfully into West
Africa. The cultivation of cloves and nutmegs would repay here
well, for allied species of trees and shrubs are indigenous, but the
first of these trees takes a long time before coming into bearing
and the cultivation of the second is a speculative affair. Allspice
I have found growing wild in several districts, but in no large
quantity. Cotton with a fine long staple grows wild in quantities
wherever there is open ground, but it is not cultivated by the
natives; and when attempts have been made to get them to collect it
they do so, but bring it in very dirty, and the traders having no
machinery to compress it like that used in America, it does not pay
to ship. Indigo is common everywhere along the Coast and used by
the natives for dyeing, as is also a teazle, which gives a very fine
permanent maroon; and besides these there are many other dyes and
drugs used by them - colocynth, datura soap bark, cardamom, ginger,
peppers, strophanthus, nux vomica, etc., etc., but the difficulty of
getting these things brought in to the traders in sufficient
quantities prevents their being exported to any considerable extent.
Tea has not been tried, and is barely worth trying, though there is
little doubt it would grow in Cameroons and Congo Francais where it
would have an excellent climate and pretty nearly any elevation it
liked. But I believe tea has of late years been discovered to be
like coffee, not such a stickler for elevation as it used to be
thought, merely requiring not to have its roots in standing water.
Vanilla grows with great luxuriance in Cameroons. In Victoria a
grove of gigantic cacao trees is heavily overgrown with this lovely
orchid in a most perfect way. It does not seem to injure the cacaos
in the least, and there are other kinds of trees it will take
equally well to. I saw it growing happily and luxuriantly under the
direction of the Roman Catholic Mission at Landana; but it requires
a continuously damp climate. Vanilla when once started gives little
or no trouble, and its pods do not require any very careful
manipulation before sending to Europe, and this is a very important
point, for a great hindrance - THE great hindrance to plantation
enterprise on the Coast - is the difficulty of getting neat-handed
labourers. I had once the pleasure of meeting a Dutch gentleman - a
plantation expert, who had been sent down the West Coast by a firm
trading there, and also in the Malay Archipelago - prospecting, at a
heavy fee, to see whether it would pay the firm to open up
plantations there better than in Malaysia. I believe his final
judgment was adverse to the West African plan, because of the
difficulty of getting skilful natives to tend young plants, and
prepare the products.
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