But I Believe Tea Has Of Late Years Been Discovered To Be Like Coffee, Not Such A Stickler For Elevation As It Used To Be Thought, Merely Requiring Not To Have Its Roots In Standing Water.

Vanilla grows with great luxuriance in Cameroons.

In Victoria a grove of gigantic cacao trees is heavily overgrown with this lovely orchid in a most perfect way. It does not seem to injure the cacaos in the least, and there are other kinds of trees it will take equally well to. I saw it growing happily and luxuriantly under the direction of the Roman Catholic Mission at Landana; but it requires a continuously damp climate. Vanilla when once started gives little or no trouble, and its pods do not require any very careful manipulation before sending to Europe, and this is a very important point, for a great hindrance - THE great hindrance to plantation enterprise on the Coast - is the difficulty of getting neat-handed labourers. I had once the pleasure of meeting a Dutch gentleman - a plantation expert, who had been sent down the West Coast by a firm trading there, and also in the Malay Archipelago - prospecting, at a heavy fee, to see whether it would pay the firm to open up plantations there better than in Malaysia. I believe his final judgment was adverse to the West African plan, because of the difficulty of getting skilful natives to tend young plants, and prepare the products. Tea he regarded as quite hopeless from this difficulty, and he said he did not think you would ever get Africans at as cheap a rate, or so deftly fingered to roll tea, as you can get Asiatics.

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