who wrote an essay in Effik on coffee growing and cultivation at large for their special help and guidance. A few chiefs, to oblige, took coffee plants, but they are not enthusiastic, for the slaves that would be required to tend coffee and keep it clean, in this vigorous forest region, are more profitably employed now in preparing palm oil.
Of the coffee plantation at Man o' War Bay I have already spoken, and of those in Congo Français, which, although not at present shipping like the German plantation, will soon be doing so. In addition to coffee and cacao attempts are being made in Congo Français to introduce the Para rubber tree, a large plantation of which I frequently visited near Libreville, and found to be doing well. This would be an excellent tree to plant in among coffee, for it is very clean and tidy, and seems as if it would take to West Africa like a duck to water, but it is not a quick cropper, and I am informed must be left at least three or four years before it is tapped at all, so, as the gardening books would say, it should be planted early.
It is very possible many other trees producing tropical products valuble 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, cardammom, ginger, peppers, strophanthus, nux vomica, &c., &c., 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 Français where it would have an excellent climate and pretty nearly any elevation it liked. But I believe tea has of late years been discovered to be like coffee, not such a stickler for elevation as it used to
