What We Want At Present In West Africa Are Three Or Four Bingers And Zintgraffs To Extend Our Possessions Northwards, Eastwards, And South-Eastwards, Until They Command The Interior Trade Routes.

And there is no reason that these men should enter from the West Coast, getting themselves killed, or half killed, with fever, before they reach their work.

Uganda, if half one hears of it is true, would be a very suitable base for them to start from, and then travelling west they might come down to the present limit of our West Coast possessions. This belt of territory across the continent would give us control of, and place us in touch with, the whole of the interior trade. A belt from north to south in Africa - thanks to our supineness and folly - we can now never have.

I will now briefly deal with the second sub-division I spoke of some pages back - the possibility of introducing new trade exports by means of cultivating plantations. The soil of West Africa is extremely rich in places, but by no means so in all, for vast tracts of it are mangrove swamps, and other vast tracts of it are miserably poor, sour, sandy clay. It is impossible in the space at my disposal to enter into a full description of the localities where these unprofitable districts occur, but you will find them here and there all along the Coast after leaving Sierra Leone. The sour clay seems to be new soil recently promoted into the mainland from dried- up mangrove swamps, and a good rough rule is, do not start a plantation on soil that is not growing hard-wood forest. Considerable areas on the Gold Coast, even though the soil is good, are now useless for cultivation, on account of their having been deforested by the natives' wasteful way of making their farms, coupled with the harmattan and the long dry season.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 611 of 705
Words from 168343 to 168664 of 194943