To The North Of Cameroons There Is No
Prospect Of Either Of These Well-Paying Articles Being Produced In A
Quantity, Or Quality, That Would Compete With South America, India,
Or The Malayan Regions, And They Will Have To Depend In The Matter
Of Plantations On Coffee And Cacao.
Below Cameroons, Congo Francais
possesses the richest soil and an excellently arranged climate.
The
lower Congo soil is bad and poor close to the river. Kacongo, the
bit of Portuguese territory to the north of the Congo banks, and
that part of Angola as far as the River Bingo, are pretty much the
same make of country as Congo Francais, only less heavily forested.
The whole of Angola is an immensely rich region, save just round
Loanda where the land is sand-logged for about fifty square miles,
and those regions to the extreme south and south-east, which are in
the Kalahari desert regions.
Coffee grows wild throughout Angola in those districts removed from
the dry coast-lands - in the districts of Golongo Alto and Cassengo
in great profusion, and you can go through utterly uncultivated
stretches of it, thirty miles of it at a time. The natives, now the
merchants have taught them its value, are collecting this wild berry
and bringing it in in quantities, and in addition the English firm
of Newton and Carnegie have started plantations up at Cassengo. The
greater part of these plantations consist of clearing and taking
care of the wild coffee, but in addition regularly planting and
cultivating young trees, as it is found that the yield per tree is
immensely increased by cultivation.
Six hundred to eight hundred bags a month were shipped from
Ambrizette alone when I was there in 1893, and the amount has since
increased and will still further increase when that leisurely, but
very worthy little railroad line, which proudly calls itself the
Royal Trans-African, shall have got its sections made up into the
coffee district. It was about thirty miles off at Ambaca when I was
in Angola, but by now it may have got further. However, I do not
think it is very likely to have gone far, and I have a persuasion
that that railroad will not become trans-African in my day; still it
has an "immediate future" compared with that which any other West
Coast railway can expect; for besides the coffee, Angola is rich in
malachite and gum of high quality, and its superior government will
attract the rubber from the Kassai region of the Congo Free State.
In our own possessions the making of plantations is being carried on
with much energy by Messrs. Miller Brothers on the Gold Coast, {468}
by several private capitalists, including Mr. A. L. Jones of
Liverpool, at Lagos; by the Royal Niger Company in their territory,
and by several head Agents in the Niger Coast Protectorate. Sir
Claude MacDonald offered every inducement to this trade development,
and gave great material help by founding a botanical station at Old
Calabar, where plants could be obtained.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 322 of 371
Words from 168831 to 169341
of 194943
