tion of the Italian name for Turkey millet, Melanga, a thing the grains rather resemble. Another very plausible derivation is that the whole word is Portuguese in origin, but a corruption of mala gens, the Portuguese having found the people they first bought them of a bad lot, and so named the pepper in memory thereof. This however is interestingly erroneous and an early example of the danger of armchairism when dealing with West Africa. For the coast of the malegens was not the coast the Portuguese first got the pepper from, but it was that coast just to the east of the Meleguetta, where all they got was killing and general unpleasantness round by the Rio San Andrew, Drewin way, which coast is now included in the Ivory.
The grains themselves are by no means confined to the Grain Coast, but are the fruit of a plant common in all West African districts, particularly so on Cameroon Mountain, where just above the 3,000 feet level on the east and south-east face you come into a belt of them, and horrid walking ground they make. I have met with them also in great profusion in the Sierra del Crystal; but there is considerable difference in the kinds. The grain of Paradise of commerce is, like that of the East Indian cardamom, enclosed in a fibrous capsule, and the numerous grains in it are surrounded by a pulp having a most pleasant, astringent, aromatic taste. This is pleasant eating, particularly if you do not manage to chew up with it any of the grains, for they are amazingly hot in the mouth, and cause one to wonder why Paradise instead of Hades was reported as their "country of origin."
The natives are very fond of chewing the capsule and the inner bark of the stem of the plant. They are, for the
