And As For The Other Trade
Stuffs, They Have Naturally For Years Drained Into The Markets Of
The French Soudan;
Instead of through such a country as Ashantee,
into the markets of the English Gold Coast; and so unless we
Run a
railroad up to encourage the white traders to go inland, and make a
market that will attract these trade routes into Coomassie, we shall
be a few years hence singing out "What's the good of Ashantee?" and
so forth, as is our foolish wont, never realising that the West
Coast is not good unless it is made so by white effort.
The new regime on the Gold Coast is undoubtedly more active than the
old - more alive to the importance of pushing inland and so forth -
and a road is going to be made twenty-five feet wide all the way to
Coomassie, and then beyond it, which is an excellent thing in its
way. But it will not do much for trade, because the pacification of
the country, and the greater security of personal property to the
native, which our rule will afford will aid him in bringing his
goods to the coast, but not so greatly aid our taking our goods
inland, for the carriers will require just as much for carrying
goods along a road, as they do for carrying goods along a bush path,
and rightly too, for it is quite as heavy work for them, and
heavier, as I know from my experience of the governmental road in
Cameroon. In such a country as West Africa there can be no doubt
that a soft bush path with a thick coating of moss and leaves on it,
and shaded from the sun above by the interlacing branches, is far
and away better going than a hard, sunny wide road. This road will
be valuable for military expeditions possibly, but military
expeditions are not everyday affairs on the Gold Coast; and it
cannot be of use for draught animals, because of the horse-sickness
and tsetse fly which occur as soon as you get into the forest behind
the littoral region: so it must not be regarded as an equivalent
for steam transport, as it will only serve to bring down the little
trickle of native trade, and possibly not increase that trickle
much.
The question of transport of course is not confined to the Gold
Coast. Below Lagos there is the great river system, towards which
the trade slowly drains through native hands to the white man's
factories on the river banks, but this trade being in the hands of
native traders is not a fraction of what it would become in the
hands of white men; and any mineral wealth there may be in the
heavily-forested stretches of country remains unworked and unknown.
The difficulty of transport here greatly hampers the exploitation of
the timber wealth, it being utterly useless for the natives to fell
even a fine tree, unless it is so close to a waterway that it can be
floated down to the factory.
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