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MELEGUETTA PEPPER
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matter of that, fond of chewing anything, but the practice in this case seems to me more repaying than when carried on with kola or ordinary twigs.

Two kinds of meleguetta pepper come up from Guinea. That from Accra is the larger, plumper, and tougher skinned, and commands the higher price. The capsule, which is about 2 inches long by 1 inch in breadth, is more oval than that of the other kind, and the grains in it are round and bluntly angular, bright brown outside, but when broken open showing a white inside. The other kind, the ordinary Guinea grain of commerce, comes from Sierra Leone and Liberia. They are devoid of the projecting tuft on the umbilicus. The capsule is like that of the Accra grain. When dry, it is wrinkled, and if soaked does not display the longitudinal frill of the Javan Amomum maximum, which it is sometimes used to adulterate. This common capsule is only about 1 inches long and an inch in diameter, but the grain when broken open is also white like the Accra one. There are, however, any quantity on Cameroons of the winged Javan variety, but these have so far not been exported.

The plants that produce the grains are zingiberaceous, cane-like in appearance, only having broader, blunter leaves than the bamboo. The flower is very pretty, in some kinds a violet pink, but in the most common a violet purple, and they are worn as marks of submission by people in the Oil Rivers suing for peace. These flowers, which grow close to the ground, seeming to belong more to the root of the plant than the stem, or, more properly speaking, looking as if they had nothing to do with the graceful great soft canes round them, but were a crop of lovely crocus-like flowers on their own account, are followed by crimson-