Then, When You Have Done This,
You May Abandon The French Plan, And Gradually Develop The Trade In
An English Manner, But Not In The English Manner A La Sierra Leone.
But Do Your Pioneer Work First.
There is a very excellent
substratum for English pioneer work on our Coasts in the trading
community, for trade is the great key to the African's heart, and
everywhere the English trader and his goods stand high in West
African esteem.
This pioneer work must be undertaken, or subsidised
by the Government as it has been in the French possessions, for the
West Coast does not offer those inducements to the ordinary
traveller that, let us say, East Africa with its magnificent herds
of big game, or the northern frontier of India, with its mountains
and its interesting forms, relics, and monuments of a high culture,
offer. Travel in West Africa is very hard work, and very unhealthy.
There are many men who would not hesitate for a moment to go there,
were the dangers of the native savagery the chief drawback; but they
hesitate before a trip which means, in all probability, month after
month of tramping through wet gloomy forests with a swamp here and
there for a change, {465} and which will, the chances are 100 to 1,
end in their dying ignominiously of fever in some wretched squalid
village.
Reckless expenditure of money in attempts to open up the country is
to be deprecated, for this hampers its future terribly, even if
attended with partial success, the mortgage being too heavy for the
estate, as the Congo Free State finances show; and if it is attended
with failure it discourages further efforts.
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