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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