It Is Not An India Filled With The Accumulated Riches
Of Ages, Waiting For The Adventurer To Enter And Shake The Pagoda
Tree.
The pagoda tree in Africa only grows over stores of buried
ivory, and even then it is a stunted specimen to that which grew
over the treasure-houses of Delhi, Seringapatam, and hundreds of
others as rich as they in gems and gold.
Africa has lots of stuff
in it; structurally more than any other continent in the world, but
it is very much in the structure, and it requires hard work to get
it out, particularly out of one of its richest regions, the West
Coast, where the gold, silver, copper, lead, and petroleum lie
protected against the miner by African fever in its deadliest form,
and the produce prepared by the natives for the trader is equally
fever-guarded, and requires white men of a particular type to work
and export it successfully - men endowed with great luck, pluck,
patience, and tact.
The first things to be considered are the natural resources of the
country. This subject may be divided into two sub-sections - (1) The
means of working these resources as they at present stand; (2) The
question of the possibility of increasing them by introducing new
materials of trade-value in the shape of tea, coffee, cocoa, etc.
With regard to the first sub-division the most cheerful things that
there are to say on the West Coast trade can be said; the means of
transport being ahead of the trade in all districts save the Gold
Coast.
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