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.
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