Reckless Expenditure Of Money In Attempts To Open Up The Country Is
To Be Deprecated, For This Hampers Its Future
Terribly, even if
attended with partial success, the mortgage being too heavy for the
estate, as the Congo Free State
Finances show; and if it is attended
with failure it discourages further efforts. What we want at
present in West Africa are three or four Bingers and Zintgraffs to
extend our possessions northwards, eastwards, and south-eastwards,
until they command the interior trade routes. And there is no
reason that these men should enter from the West Coast, getting
themselves killed, or half killed, with fever, before they reach
their work. Uganda, if half one hears of it is true, would be a
very suitable base for them to start from, and then travelling west
they might come down to the present limit of our West Coast
possessions. This belt of territory across the continent would give
us control of, and place us in touch with, the whole of the interior
trade. A belt from north to south in Africa - thanks to our
supineness and folly - we can now never have.
I will now briefly deal with the second sub-division I spoke of some
pages back - the possibility of introducing new trade exports by
means of cultivating plantations. The soil of West Africa is
extremely rich in places, but by no means so in all, for vast tracts
of it are mangrove swamps, and other vast tracts of it are miserably
poor, sour, sandy clay. It is impossible in the space at my
disposal to enter into a full description of the localities where
these unprofitable districts occur, but you will find them here and
there all along the Coast after leaving Sierra Leone. The sour clay
seems to be new soil recently promoted into the mainland from dried-
up mangrove swamps, and a good rough rule is, do not start a
plantation on soil that is not growing hard-wood forest.
Considerable areas on the Gold Coast, even though the soil is good,
are now useless for cultivation, on account of their having been
deforested by the natives' wasteful way of making their farms,
coupled with the harmattan and the long dry season.
The regions of richest soil are not in our possessions, but in those
of Germany, France, Spain, and Portugal, namely, the Cameroons and
its volcanic island series, Fernando Po, Principe, and San Thome.
The rich volcanic earths of these places will enable them to compete
in the matter of plantations with any part of the known world.
Cameroons is undoubtedly the best of these, because of its superior
river supply, and although not in the region of the double seasons
it is just on the northern limit of them, and the height of the
Peak - 13,760 feet - condenses the water-laden air from its
surrounding swamps and the Atlantic, so that rain is pretty frequent
throughout the year. When within the region of the double seasons
just south of Cameroons you have a rainfall no heavier than that of
the Rivers, yet better distributed, an essential point for the
prosperity of such plantations as those of tea and tobacco, which
require showers once a month.
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