For Before It Even Reaches The Factory Of The Coast
Settlement, That Stuff Has Got To Keep A Whole Series
Of traders.
It appears at first bad that this should be the case, but the case
it is along the
West coast of the continent save in the districts
commanded by the Royal Niger company, who, with courage and
enterprise, have pushed far inland, and got in touch with the great
interior trade routes - a performance which has raised in the breasts
of the Coast trader tribes who have been supplanted, a keen
animosity, which like most animosity in Africa, is not regardful of
truth. The tribes that have had the trade of the Bight of Biafra
passing through their hands have been accustomed, according to the
German Government who are also pressing inland, to make seventy-five
per cent. profit on it, and they resent being deprived of this. A
good deal is to be said in favour of their views; among other things
that the greater part of the seaboard districts of West Africa, I
may say every part from Sierra Leone to Cameroon, is structurally
incapable of being self-supporting under existing conditions. Below
Cameroon, on my beloved South-west coast, which is infinitely richer
than the Bight of Benin, rich producing districts come down to the
sea in most places until you reach the Congo; but here again the
middleman is of great use to the interior tribes, and if they do
have to pay him seventy-five per cent, serve them right.
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