Chapter XIII: Part IV: Moral and Material Progress (1)

I.—The Products of the Oil Palm.
II.—The Production of Rubber.
III.—The Production of Cocoa.
IV.—The Progress of Christian Missions.

I

THE PRODUCTS OF THE OIL PALM

With the date palm we have been long familiar, the cocoa-nut palm likewise, and those too which decorate our ball-rooms, galleries and banqueting halls, we greet as delightsome friends, but what is the oil palm—the Eloesis Guineensis of West Africa? It is said that five thousand years ago its sap was used by the Egyptians for the purpose of embalming the bodies of their great dead. To-day by its aid we travel thousands of miles at express rate; it has been so handled by modern science that it enters largely into our diet; the merchants in Hamburg and Liverpool make fortunes out of it; millions of coloured people live by it, and yet it is barely known to the civilized community. A fortnight’s fairly pleasant steam from Liverpool brings the traveller in sight of the high red clay coast line of Sierra Leone, and there the oil palm first greets the traveller in all its luxuriant grandeur.

[Sidenote: PROPAGATING THE OIL PALM]

From Freetown away down the coast as far as San Paul de Loanda, the traveller is never far from the home of the oil palm—the most valuable tree of West Africa—probably the most prolific source of human sustenance in the world. She greets the traveller everywhere as he steps ashore; she invites him to the cool shade of her avenues leading to some hospitable bungalow; she affords a shelter at intervals along the scorching dusty track—as welcome as an oasis of the desert; she waves at him vigorously from the hill-top like some fluttering banner, or gently nods her graceful plumes in the still valley; she stands as sentinel on the outskirts of the native village, or like some giant memorial column on the plain. All nature strikes the African traveller dumb with admiration, but above all in entrancing loveliness the graceful oil palm reigns supreme.

To the parched and weary she is at once meat and drink and friendly shelter. Her palm cabbage and nut oil are no less palatable than her foaming fresh-drawn wine, and if no other home affords, her branches offer a temporary and not comfortless dwelling. She provides her guest with oil to lubricate his gun, with fibre to plug his boat if it springs a leak; her fronds serve as a weapon to combat the infinite torment of flies, or interlaced as a basket to carry a meal. To her the native goes for a tool or a cooking-utensil, a mat or a loin cloth, a basket or a brush, a fishing net or a rope, a torch or a musical instrument, a roof or a wall. To him she is a necessity, to the traveller a luxury, to the merchant a fortune, to the artist a subject full of charm.

Professor Wyndham Dunstan has stated that the oil palm “does not occur thickly much beyond 200 miles from the coast.” Since those words were written we have learnt that whole forests of the oil palm exist over a thousand miles from the coast. It thrives throughout West Africa wherever the atmosphere is sufficiently humid, but it loves best of all the swampy valleys of Sherboro Island and Nigeria, the cocoa farms of San Thomé, the Gold Coast and the Congo, which are by it provided with the necessary protection from the scorching sun and from the fierce tornadoes which sweep periodically over the land. In the strictest sense the oil palm has never yet been an object of cultivation in West Africa, neither is it in the literal sense self-propagating. The housewife, separating the fibrous pericarp from the nuts, tosses the latter aside or scatters the residue on to the rubbish heap behind the hut, with the inevitable result of an early and vigorous crop of young palms. In the course of time the inhabitants of the village, according to African custom, pick up not only their beds, but also their huts, and walk, perhaps something less than a mile away, where they clear another piece of forest land and build up another village. The old site, thus abandoned to nature, is quickly covered with vigorous growth, but in the race for supremacy the graceful palms lead the way and become the communal property of the former inhabitants.

The screeching grey parrot of West Africa with its horny bill tears the oily fruit from the bunch, after consuming most of the oleaginous fibres of the pericarp, drops the nuts whilst flying, far and wide. These, in turn, add to Africa’s economic wealth, and thus do man and animal join in spreading through ever wider regions the growth of the oil palm.

Within ten years the tree begins to push out its bunches of fruit, beginning with tiny bunches of the size, shape and appearance of an ordinary bunch of black grapes. Some trees bear in eight years, and an earlier date still is claimed for certain varieties, but the fruit at this stage seldom yields any appreciable quantity of oil. From fifteen onwards to a hundred and twenty years, the palm plantations give forth an almost continuous supply of fruit, every tree bearing twice a year. In the rainy season the supply is most abundant, but in the second period, known by many as the “short wet” season there is a fair secondary harvest. All the trees do not, however, bear at the same time, and in many areas of the Equatorial regions where the seasons are not sharply defined or always regular, the supply of nuts is never exhausted.

In appearance a head of fruit resembles a huge bunch of grapes with long protecting thorns protruding between each nut, and a good bunch will contain from 1500 to 2000 nuts. A single fruit in appearance is about the size of a large date, and the pericarp is composed of fibre matted closely together with a yellow solidified oil, which fibrous substance envelops a nut or “stone”; this in turn encloses a kernel of the size and shape of a large hazel kernel, in appearance and composition indistinguishable from the well-known “Brazil nut.” From the fibre a dark reddish oil is obtained, whilst the kernels that are shipped to Europe yield a finer white oil.

[Sidenote: COLLECTING THE NUTS]

The almost universal practice amongst the natives in harvesting the nuts is to climb the tree by walking up the trunk with the aid of a loop of stout creeper. Arriving at the top at a height of sixty or eighty feet, the man deals a few vigorous blows with an axe which severs the bunch or bunches from the tree and they then fall to the ground. As the whole family usually takes part in the production of oil and in the division of labour, the man, having cut down the fruit, descends the tree, picks up his protective spear or gun, and returns home, closely followed by the wife and daughters, who transport the bunches of nuts in the wicker baskets which they have woven in their spare moments.

In every colony a similar process is adopted to separate the fruit from the parent stem. Until it is over ripe, the fruit not only adheres firmly to its stem but the porcupine thorns sometimes two inches long, make separation anything but a pleasant task. The tribes everywhere collect the clusters or bunches into heaps and cover them with plantain or banana leaves, exposing them to the sun for from three to six days, the effect of which is that the nuts, subjected to the hot rays of a tropical sun and cut off from the refreshing sustenance of the mother tree, lose their tenacious grip and readily drop away from their stem.

The methods adopted to force the oil from the fibrous pericarp differ considerably in the several political divisions of West Africa. Roughly, however, they fall into two divisions: (_a_) by fermentation; (_b_) by boiling; and in certain parts of the Kroo Coast by a combination of both methods.

The fermenting process is carried out by placing a large quantity of separated, but hard, nuts into a hole about four feet deep, this having been first lined with plantain leaves. In the regions nearer the coast towns, these pits are either paved or cemented inside and in some cases they are both paved and cemented. The nuts are covered up and then left for some weeks, even months, to ferment thoroughly. They are then either pounded in the pit with wooden pestles, or they may be taken out and treated in prepared wooden mortars.

The process of boiling is more expeditious. The nuts are boiled or steamed until the firmly coagulated fibre shows signs of yielding; then they are placed in an old canoe or large mortar and pounded with wooden pestles. In both processes, whether by fermentation or by boiling, the oily fibre separates itself from the hard inner “stone.” The fibre, which is by this time a tangled mass of yellow and brown, is then taken and squeezed, sometimes with the aid of water, through a woven press and a stream of golden liquid results. Sometimes loads of the oily fibre are thrown pell-mell into a large canoe half filled with water in which the children delight to paddle, causing the oil to rise to the surface, when the elders skim it from the top and carry it in earthenware pots for boiling and straining before sending it on its way to the market and the European consumer.

[Sidenote: OIL AND KERNEL TRADE]

The oil, however, is but one exportable product of the palm tree; the value of the inner kernel may be gathered from the fact that over four million pounds’ worth of palm kernels are sent to Europe every year. This kernel is encased in an extremely hard shell, which varies so much in size that until quite recently there was no satisfactory “stone” cracking machinery in Africa. There are now several machines on the market, but the old grey-haired lady of the West African kraal, with her primitive upper and nether grind stones, still makes by far the most reliable “cracker.”

At Victoria, in German Cameroons, we saw an elaborate set of machinery for dealing in turn with the oily fibrous pericarp of the nut, and later, extracting the kernel from the inner stone. The latter process was that of a general crushing, then throwing the entire mass into a brine bath and so separating the shells from the kernels, which were then taken out and dried in the sun. This process, while being infinitely more expeditious, has the obvious drawback that a large proportion of the kernels are so bruised and broken that it entails a considerable wastage of oil.

THE PALM IN TONNAGE AND IN FIGURES STERLING.

Exports in round figures for the year 1911—

OIL. KERNELS.

Tons. Values. Tons. Values.

French Senegal 1 36 1,418 14,300
” Guinea 53 1,300 4,500 36,600
” Ivory Coast 5,800 107,100 5,340 45,500
” Dahomey 14,400 254,100 34,200 400,000
” Congo 125 3,100 570 7,600

British Gambia — — 447 4,758
” Sierra Leone 2,902 69,930 42,893 649,347
” Gold Coast 6,441 128,916 13,254 175,891
” Nigeria 77,180 1,696,875 176,390 2,574,405

German Cameroons 3,000 63,000 13,500 177,530
” Togoland 3,050 61,600 8,100 101,700

Belgian Congo
(approximately) 700 20,000 2,500 40,000
------- ---------- ------- ----------
113,652 £2,405,957 303,112 £4,227,631

TOTAL OUTPUT.

Tons. Values.

Oil 113,652 £2,405,957
Kernels 303,112 £4,227,631
------- ----------
416,764 £6,633,588

The proportionate output from the palm trees from the different colonies of West Africa is therefore—

Square mileage
of territories. Tons. Values.

French 992,000 66,407 £869,636
Belgian 900,000 3,200 60,000
British 454,160 319,507 5,300,122
German 224,830 27,650 403,830

Production in figures sterling per square mile under the several colonizing Powers—

£ _s._ _d._
Great Britain 11 13 3 per square mile
Germany 1 16 0 ” ”
France 0 17 8 ” ”
Belgium 0 1 4 ” ”

Whilst the palm provides one of the principal exports of West Africa for consumption in Europe, its domestic uses are inseparable from native life. The fruit is used by the natives in many sections of primitive culinary art. Pounded with manioca leaves, Indian corn and red peppers, a savoury pottage is manufactured which is a universal delight. One of the choicest vegetables in the African continent is the pearly white head of the palm, which, in small trees of two years’ growth, weighs about 1 pound, but in trees of many years’ growth, may turn the scale at 56 pounds. The substance of this vegetable differs in appearance and taste but little from the Brazil nut, but when cooked provides a succulent dish not unlike, though superior to, sea kale. The natives cook this in palm oil, but Europeans usually prefer it boiled and served with a white sauce, or baked in a custard. To obtain this vegetable is almost invariably to destroy the tree, consequently it seldom figures on the every-day menu.

The Creeper at an early stage. Root and Branch in deadly grip.]

[Sidenote: OIL AND WINE]

Meat, fish and fowl are all of them stewed in palm oil, and, as African meat is deficient in fat, the palm oil makes an excellent and appetizing substitute. I once smelled a very savoury native “hot pot” which, upon examination, revealed a wonderful mixture. The liquid was golden with palm oil, and floating about, adding to the compendium of flavours, I detected bats and beetles, a flat fish “cheek by jowl” with a monkey’s head, caterpillars fitting themselves in with sections of field rats and parrots—altogether a stew delightful to the nostrils, at least of the African boys and girls who squatted around the huge clay cooking pot. The white man, though he usually has no keen appetite for native stews or pottage, lunches and dines off “palm oil chop” with as great a relish as does his Indian confrère upon “curries.” The “chop” may be fish, flesh or fowl, but it all goes by the name “palm oil chop,” which has a happy and almost essential knack in West Africa of hiding a multitude of “foreign bodies.”

No African meal can be regarded as complete without the addition of palm oil, and, as a beverage, palm wine is extensively though moderately consumed. This sparkling beverage closely resembles in appearance the “stone ginger” of civilization. The tribes on the Upper Kasai are probably the greatest consumers of palm wine in Africa. In those parts of the tropics where quantities of sugar cane are cultivated, palm wine competes with a sister product from the cane; the sweet and somewhat insipid taste of the latter being more palatable to some tribes than the sharp flavour of the palm wine. The Eloeis wine is the sap of the palm tree itself, extracted by various means, generally by cutting off the male flower-spike and fixing a calabash to the wound to catch the juice which is removed every morning. Another method is to remove the palm cabbage or head; yet another, to cut down the tree and “dig” a hole in the heart of the trunk, from which the liquid is then scooped into a calabash or earthenware pot. Europeans generally prefer the wine when fresh from the tree, owing to the fact that after a few hours it begins to ferment and loses its sweetness.

The oil palms of West Africa are taking an increasing share in supplying the temporal wants of both the white and the coloured man. It is safe to say that there is no tree in the universe capable of providing to so great and varied an extent, the daily wants of the human organism.

II

THE PRODUCTION OF RUBBER

Rubber has been known for the last four hundred years, but it is only within the last century, or little more, that it has been put to practical use. Civilization was for nearly three hundred years content with the historical fact of Pincon’s Indians of Brazil playing “ball” with crude lumps of rubber, and then it awoke to the fact that rubber could be used to erase pencil marks. In our boyhood Charles Macintosh had established its use as a protective from rain, but in our manhood the annual demand of Great Britain alone for rubber has grown to nearly 50,000 tons. We have lived through the sensation of a “Rubber Boom” which is only now commencing to exact its toll for the immeasurable folly of the thoughtless investing public.

The native use of rubber in West Africa as also among the Brazilian Indians, was first as an aid to merrymaking, in the form of heads of drum-sticks, and in that capacity evoked harmonious chords from the goat-skins tightly stretched over the hollowed forest log. How little these early Africans dreamed that this simple aid to the charms of music would one day deluge their Continent in human blood! There are to-day very few colonies in West Africa without rubber forests which nature—prodigal here as everywhere with her economic gifts—planted generations ago.

The discovery of the great West African rubber supplies dates back about thirty years, but it is a remarkable fact that Stanley in his books on the Founding of the Congo Free State, laid very little stress upon the future of rubber in the Congo.

In 1882 Sir Alfred Maloney urged Southern Nigeria to wake up to the possibilities of rubber, and in 1894 Sir Gilbert Carter, to whom our Nigeria colony owes so much, invited a party of Gold Coasters to explore the hinterland forests with the result that they discovered an abundance of what appeared to be rubber-bearing plants and trees. The native community then set about vigorously searching for rubber with the result that the “Ireh” tree was discovered, and specimens of its latex forwarded to Kew in 1895. Although it had been discovered in the Gold Coast colony ten years earlier the administration in Nigeria was apparently in ignorance of the fact.

There is some evidence that King Leopold received the first intimation of the almost fabulous stores of rubber in the Congo forests between the years 1888 and 1890, and the alert mind of that astute monarch lost no time in formulating plans for its exploitation in the Congo Free State, and what is less generally recognized in the French Congo also.

Since 1885, when the African product first made its presence felt in the rubber market, the natives of that continent have gathered and sent to Europe over 250,000 tons of rubber, the outstanding fact being that all this latex represents sylvan produce, the replacement of which is extremely doubtful. Dr. Chevalier is of the opinion that the natives themselves received for the total output 500,000,000 francs or approximately 9d. per pound. This I very much doubt, for it must not be forgotten that a large proportion of the rubber was obtained, if not for nothing, then for very little.

[Sidenote: WEST AFRICAN VARIETIES]

The principal sources of rubber latex are the Funtumia (Ireh) and the Landolphia varieties, which, to the ordinary reader, fall respectively under the classification of trees and vines. The full-grown Funtumia tree measures from 2 ft. 6 in. to 4 ft., or more, in circumference. The growth of the Landolphia is wild and erratic, creeping along the ground sometimes for several yards, then gradually winding its way through the undergrowth and away up the limbs and branches of the firmly rooted forest giants to a height of forty to fifty feet, then in the full enjoyment of light, it becomes vigorously prolific, sending its leafy branches in all directions, and interlacing the trees overhead. Most scientists seem to agree that it is only when the Landolphia emerges into the sunlight at the tree tops that material size is imparted to the main stem. From the economic standpoint it is important to bear in mind that ordinarily a Landolphia vine takes from ten to twenty years to climb its way up the tree trunk of the average forest tree, at which period the main stem of the vine is seldom more than one inch in diameter.

Beyond question by far the larger proportions of rubber from Central Africa have been obtained from the Landolphia vines, that from the Congo basin almost entirely so. Next in order comes the output from Funtumia forests of the more northerly latitudes, and beyond this a certain amount of grass rubber has been obtained, but the results barely justify the trouble involved.

The extraordinary development and almost general investment in the rubber industry have familiarized the public with rubber production. Almost every schoolboy could write an essay upon the herring-bone or half herring-bone tapping, coolie lines, spacing and so forth. The production of rubber conveys to most minds well-ordered estates of upright trees, model workmen’s dwellings, drying and boiling sheds, constructed by skilled Europeans, rolling tables, hot and cold water supplies, all under the control of neatly clad coolies. None of these conditions apply to West Africa, for there everything is to-day primitive.

The larger Funtumia trees are tapped in a very rough “herring-bone” manner and the latex caught either in leaves or in a calabash, and then transferred to a wooden receptacle for coagulation, but large numbers of trees have been bled to death through the almost incessant tapping to which they have been subjected. Funtumia more than any other variety requires carefully-regulated tapping, and it is well-nigh hopeless to expect the native collector in the hinterland regions to exercise that degree of care which the Funtumia tree demands as the price of giving forth a sustained output. The damage done to the bark alone in the rough and ready methods of extraction almost invariably renders the tree unfit for future tapping; the trees will live sometimes for a few years, but before long they perish. Dr. Chevalier, writing of the Ivory Coast, says: “Wherever exploitation has spread it has caused the adult Funtumia trees to disappear very rapidly. Some are cut level with the ground by the natives in order to extract their maximum yield, others, tapped too frequently, die standing, at last there remain only young Funtumia trees, under fifteen years of age.” This is true of the major part of the rubber-bearing regions of West Africa.

[Sidenote: METHODS OF EXTRACTION]

Several methods are followed in the extraction of the latex from the Landolphia. In every case that has come under our notice the vines were cut down with little thought for the future. Indeed in the upper regions of the Congo the natives sever the vine close to the ground and then tearing it from the trees to which it clings, they cut the vines into lengths of about eighteen inches and pile them into stacks so that from the severed ends the latex may bleed into forest leaves or gourds. Many of the tribes raise the stack of severed creepers upon forked sticks and kindle a slow fire beneath as they assert that the latex flows more freely and completely with the application of heat.

The whole process is beyond question most wasteful, particularly where the natives not only sever the vine, but dig up the roots, compelling these also to yield up their stores of latex. To-day as the traveller marches through the rubber forests of the Congo basin he meets every few yards little heaps of decaying vine from which the rubber has been taken. Frequently too, one sees overhead a tangled mass of dead vine which has withered away through the main stem having been severed. The natives were either in too great a hurry, or else unable to climb for those spreading vines which would often measure some hundreds of yards.

Another method is that adopted by the native tribes in the Kasai River of the Congo, and the Lunda province of Portuguese Angola. Whole families or tribes will make a temporary home in the forest, pitching their little huts on a piece of high ground near a stream. Every day the men will scatter in all directions cutting down and gathering the vines into bundles which they will convey to these little encampments.

The bark of the vines is then stripped off and laid out on blocks of wood, old canoes, boards, or trunks of trees, preparatory to beating it with heavy wooden mallets, which process gradually reduces the bark to a stringy mass not unlike shredded tobacco. It is then threshed with smaller mallets which in time gradually pulverize the wood element into fine powder, leaving “pancakes” of red rubber, about the size of a breakfast plate. These are then cut into thin strips, starting from the outer edge, and wound into balls, just as the manufacturers wind balls of knitting wool. This method though equally wasteful in collection, conserves the whole of the rubber latex.

Travellers in the Kasai territories of the Congo are generally first aware of their approach to human habitation by hearing the distant thud, thud, of the rubber mallets which is a feature of almost every village of that region.

Hand in hand with the rubber work of the Congo is that of cane basket making, which the busy women weave in all sizes for packing the rubber, thus avoiding the heavy cost of importing “shooks” or barrels from Europe. Every year some hundreds of thousands of these light but very strong hampers are made for conveying the rubber to the buying stations and thence to the European markets.

[Sidenote: THE FUTURE]

The West African rubber problems of to-day which overshadow all others are those of exhaustion and replenishment. Are the forests denuded of rubber, and if so, is there any probability or possibility, of rubber cultivation to replace the exhausted supply? Both these phases of the question are difficult of complete and categorical answer.

For thirty years now exploitation has been running wild through the forests, and within the last fifteen years the rate and methods of exploitation have from every point of view been ruinous. The Funtumia trees have been ruthlessly cut down and even where tapping has taken place, it has been done at any and every season of the year, and in general practice tapped whenever and wherever the tree would yield an ounce of rubber.

Dr. Chevalier is of the opinion that the Funtumia will replace itself owing to the remarkable habit of self-propagation which the tree possesses. The light feathery seeds are easily carried upon every breeze it is true, but unfortunately there is little hope of preserving these young trees from crude and reckless tapping in the farther recesses of the forests. It is generally accepted that the rubber vine areas are being rapidly exhausted. Mr. Consul Mackie says of the Congo, “Wild rubber in districts in which it has been worked on an extensive scale, is now becoming scarce in places. Many of the large rubber zones have been worked out completely.”

We were informed by natives of the Kasai who were bringing in their rubber to the factories, that whereas ten years ago they had only to go one or two days into the forests before finding rubber, they now have to journey nearly a fortnight before they can locate any appreciable number of vines. Throughout the Equatorial regions of the Congo, the rubber vines and trees are so completely worked out that the natives have given up attempting to collect rubber and devote all their energies to gum copal and palm oil.

Most disinterested “coasters” will support Dr. Christy in the opinion that if the African rubber industry is to depend upon the wild forests there is very little chance of its survival.

[Sidenote: CULTIVATION IN THE CONGO]

Within the last fifteen years efforts have been made in various colonies to cultivate rubber. The most promising results are certainly in Nigeria, where the Benin communal plantations are proving so successful that villages in other districts are commencing similar plantations. Many thousands of Funtumia trees are now ready for tapping and some of the rubber obtained has secured 6s. 6d. per pound. Individual native farmers are now taking up rubber planting, and in Southern Nigeria we saw some well-ordered plantations under native control, one of which started in 1896 has over 30,000 trees and gives promise of a good output. In the Gold Coast the natives are interspersing Funtumia trees with their cocoa plants, under the instruction of Government advisers. In Belgian Congo vigorous efforts have been made for the last twelve years to cultivate rubber. In the year 1899 a Royal decree was issued requiring that 150 trees or vines should be planted for every ton of rubber exported, and in June, 1902, the number of plants was raised to 500. As a further incentive some of the Concessionnaire Companies gave a bonus to their agents for every tree planted. The ordinary Belgian being very keen on piling up his banking account the planting was pursued with vigour. As, however, the ordinance did not specify the variety to be planted the Agents of the State and Concessionaire Companies planted varieties good and bad, known and unknown! until on paper the total number of trees planted ran into many millions.

Every few months an Inspector was supposed to visit these areas, but as this official usually had an area of about 25,000 square miles under his control, he was seldom able to visit more than one centre every year. Badly paid, with little allowance for provisions, this man usually responded to the warm hospitality of his planter host, and generally did not make exhaustive inquiries into the rubber planting. On one occasion such an inspector visited a district after the Agent had gone to Europe, in order to “check” the trees and vines before the new Agent arrived to take over the stock and plantations. He asked me if I could direct him to one plantation of 60,000 trees and vines of which he possessed a neatly drawn chart. I could only direct him to where the plantation was supposed to exist, and he immediately set off on what I hinted was a useless journey, and as I expected returned in the afternoon without having discovered a single vine!

Apart from these paper plantations there are certainly several millions of rubber trees in the Congo, and every species almost has been tried. At one time the Belgian tax-payer was told that the Manihot Glaziovii was going to provide fabulous returns, but when the floods came and the winds blew, the spreading Manihots caught the force of the elements and toppled over in all directions like ninepins. The Funtumia was then going to save the Congo from financial disaster, but the “borers” took a fancy to the tree and this, coupled with the fact that in the Congo the Funtumia yields but little rubber, all serious attempts at the extension of Funtumia have been abandoned.

Hopes are now being centred upon the Hevea Braziliensis, but though many of these trees are of ten years’ growth the yield is equally disappointing.

In German Cameroons rubber planting is being pushed forward mainly with the Funtumia and Hevea varieties. In Portuguese West Africa hopes are centred upon Manihot and Funtumia.

The best that can be said of the rubber cultivation in West Africa is that it has not yet passed the experimental stage, and that there is some promise of success in the Gold Coast and Southern Nigeria.

[Sidenote: RUBBER COMPETITION]

There is, however, one other factor which must not be overlooked, Mr. Herbert Wright pointed out last year that cultivated plantation rubber would soon be arriving in quantities which would cause embarrassment to the rubber merchants. It is certain that when this happens prices are bound to fall, perhaps dramatically. The question for the West African rubber planting community to ask is: can they, when prices fall, compete with the West and East Indies, where labour is plentiful and cheap, and where there is practically no costly land transport. A merchant from the Straits Settlements once informed me that West African rubber producers must be prepared to compete with the East—at 9d. per pound. If that prediction should be justified by future events then West Africa will be wise to concentrate upon its trusty friends the Oil Palm and Cocoa Tree.

III

THE PRODUCTION OF COCOA

Cocoa to most individuals is suggestive of carefully and tastefully packed tins, or in chocolate form, of delightful little packages done up in neat silver paper and prettily tied with bows of silk ribbon. To others it means a welcome and fragrant breakfast or supper beverage. To few, indeed, does it represent anything else. The man in the street, if he thinks at all upon investing his savings in cocoa, argues that after all there is a limit to human digestion, particularly where sweetmeats are concerned, consequently he need not trouble himself about “futures” in cocoa for the field is at best a restricted one. It never occurs to him that the demand for every species of vegetable oil and fat is becoming more clamant every day. Somehow he never asks himself why Bournville, York and Bristol cocoa is 2_s._ 6_d._ per pound, and Dutch only 1_s._ per pound. He presumes, and if he tries it he knows, that one quality is better than the other, but it does not occur to him that there is something in the one beverage which is lacking in the other. The butter from the latter—the pure fat too expensive to eat, but not too expensive to incorporate in pomades for personal adornment, has been extracted. There is no more rigid limit to the demand for cocoa than to the demand for rubber; not only so, but nothing has yet appeared even on the horizon of our imagination that can take the place occupied to-day by the cocoa bean, both for internal and external consumption. This cannot be said with regard to rubber, wool or silk.

[Sidenote: COCOA IN CULTIVATION]

The total world’s supply is to-day close on a quarter of a million tons of cocoa per annum. The East and West Indies and the great Amazonian Valleys, have for generations poured their supplies into Europe, but it is only within the last thirty years that West Africa has made her influence felt upon the cocoa markets of Europe. It is very difficult to obtain reliable evidence as to the colonists who first introduced cocoa to West Africa, probably the credit for it belongs to the Portuguese, whose love of colonization is everywhere evinced by the plants, fruits and grain which they conveyed in past years from one continent to another.

Given a humid atmosphere, a well-watered land and a tropical sun, cocoa will grow almost anywhere up to a height of nearly 1500 feet. Of such lands enjoying atmospheric conditions highly suitable to the production of cocoa, there are nearly one million square miles in the tropical regions of the West African continent. San Thomé and Principe, with less than 300 square miles under cultivation, supply to the world’s markets over 30,000 tons of cocoa every year; if, therefore, but one quarter of the potential cocoa producing areas of West Africa could be brought under cultivation at the same rate, there could be produced over 25,000,000 tons of cocoa.

To-day cocoa is being cultivated in the German colonies of Togoland and Cameroons; in the Portuguese colonies of Cabenda, San Thomé and Principe; in the Belgian Congo; in the Spanish island of Fernando Po, and in the British colonies of the Gold Coast and Nigeria. In all these the production has distinctive features.

From the standpoint of plantation arrangements and the application of scientific methods, the Portuguese in San Thomé are easily first. This no doubt is due to the fact that for over twenty years the planters have been concentrating all their efforts upon the cocoa bean. Throughout their whole area San Thomé and the sister island of Principe are under cocoa cultivation and the traveller never gets away from the sour odour of fermenting cocoa. A series of high hills and deep valleys with numerous rivulets represent the physical features of the islands. The hill ranges, for the most part, rise tier above tier, until they culminate in the Pico da San Thomé with an altitude of just over 7000 feet. The summit of the peak is seldom seen, for the island lies bathed in mists, which warmed by a tropical sun provide the ideal cocoa-growing climate.

The streams which flow unceasingly down the hillsides are scientifically trenched so that a continuous supply of water traverses the cocoa groves all over the islands, and the farms in the centre of each group of plantations all enjoy a plentiful supply of excellent water.

[Sidenote: PORTUGUESE COCOA]

The fermenting sheds are all of them organized in an up-to-date manner for which a knowledge of industries in other Portuguese colonies hardly prepares the traveller. Nowhere throughout West Africa are there such scientific and elaborate cocoa drying grounds as one sees on these Portuguese islands. The majority of cocoa planters in West Africa are satisfied with cemented drying grounds in open courtyards. The cocoa is spread out to dry and left in the open not only during the whole day, but throughout the night. On several roças on the cocoa islands, the Portuguese have, at enormous expense, fitted up drying grounds which are mechanically moved into shelter whenever a storm threatens. Doubtless it is due to the great care exercised by the Portuguese in the work of fermenting and drying that their cocoa is so uniformly good.

Altogether there are nearly 300 roças on the two islands and, with one or two exceptions, they are in Portuguese hands; there is a Belgian plantation, and one or two are owned by natives whose ability to make cocoa production a financial success is demonstrated by the fact that one who died recently left £6000 for the education of the children of San Thomé.

The cocoa plantations on these islands are all so compact and within such easy reach of the sea-shore that transport is quite easy. Both horses and mules live fairly well on the islands, and these, coupled with bullock carts and some 1500 kilometres of Decauville railway throughout the islands and running out to the pier, render unnecessary the porterage which constitutes such a problem for the cocoa planters in every other colony in West Africa. It is a melancholy thought that this industry, built up at so great cost to human life—both white and coloured—stands only a bare chance of permanence. The lack of indigenous labour, coupled with the absence of statesmanship on the part of the Home Government, can only lead to irretrievable disaster.

The nearest approach to the Portuguese systems of cocoa production is to be found in Belgian Congo, where physical and climatic conditions are almost identical with those of the Portuguese islands. The first plantations are met with close to the mouth of the river in the Mayumbe country, but before reaching the next one has to traverse nearly a thousand miles. These are situated at the confluence of the Aruwimi river and the main Congo, and there are besides several small plantations on the Aruwimi itself. As cocoa-producing enterprises, the only ones to take into serious consideration are those of the Mayumbe country, south of the Chiloanga—the Portuguese river, which enters the sea at Landana. The plantations are run under three separate interests, and may be classified as State controlled, Roman Catholic and Merchant. The merchants complain that their difficulty in obtaining labour is greatly increased owing to the missions and the State using forced labour for their plantations. It seems incredible that this should be so, but these complaints are neither new nor isolated. The Commission of Enquiry sent to the Congo by King Leopold had evidence before it which shewed that the Mission farms at least were largely staffed with forced labour. The following passage is an extract from the report of that Commission in 1905:

“The greater part of the natives which people the chapel farms
are neither orphans nor workmen engaged by contract. They are
demanded of the Chiefs, who dare not refuse; and only force,
more or less disguised, enables then to be retained.”

If the Belgian Government could concentrate upon a serious development of the Mayumbe country by laying down railways, making roads, building bridges, opening up creeks, and rivers, there is no reason why the Mayumbe country should not increase its yearly output of cocoa by many thousands of tons.

The Spanish contribution to the world’s supply is not yet or ever likely to be anything material, for as colonists in Africa the Spaniards have ceased to count.

[Sidenote: GERMAN COCOA]

In German colonies cocoa growing is extending rapidly and from a financial point of view satisfactorily. The German Administration in the Cameroons, however, seems to favour such enterprises mainly as European undertakings in which the natives are mere labourers. Within recent years, probably in view of the success of the Gold Coast production, some effort has been made to encourage the natives by gifts of seed and young plants to lay down their own plantations. But the prevailing German opinion has been set forth in a German report, published in _Der Tropenpflanzer_ (No. 1, January, 1912), wherein it is stated:—

“What is required in the Cameroons is a more liberal policy
on the part of the German Government towards the plantations,
both as regards the terms for acquiring land, and on the part
of the district officials to obtain better facilities for
getting labour, in order to warrant and make possible a large
and profitable extension of the cocoa-planting area. This will
mean a material improvement in the prosperity of the colony,
for it is evident that what the Gold Coast has achieved by
means of an intelligent population, and under suitable climatic
conditions, can and will never be done in Cameroons with such
material as the Bakwiris, Dualas, etc.”

Whilst colonial Germans take this view, the native certainly will never emulate the Gold Coast tribes, for the African has a habit of acting up, or down, to European expectations. The Editor of _Tropical Life_ truly remarked that whilst these views are held in Berlin, “Germany would never do any good with the Bakwiris and Dualas; neither did she with the Herreros, and so ‘punished’ them because they, poor wretches, could not understand the German method of ruling Africa as do the German Michels at home.”

There is some reason to believe that the cultivation of the cocoa bean began in Cameroons and Victoria some years earlier than that on the Gold Coast, and it is even claimed by some that the phenomenally successful industry of the British colony was commenced with a seed pod obtained from Ambas Bay.

[Sidenote: A ROMANCE IN COCOA]

There is probably no single feature in colonial enterprise which can compare with the cocoa romance of the British colony of the Gold Coast. The honour of having introduced the industry into that colony is eagerly debated. Everyone agrees that it belongs to either the Basel Mission through their introduction of West Indian Christians, or to a certain native carpenter returning from Ambas Bay, or Victoria. Mr. Tudhope, the Director of Agriculture, is inclined to give credit to the native, but it must be admitted that the Basel Mission authorities possess the most circumstantial evidence in support of their claim. One of their oldest missionaries at Christiansborg states that about the year 1885 he saw the original cocoa tree at Odumase; another, that he saw this tree in full bearing in 1895. It is instructive to recall that the first export, amounting to 80 lbs. weight, was in the year 1891—that is six years after the original tree was seen at Odumase.

The missionaries, however, readily admit that soon after their agents introduced cocoa at Odumase, a native arrived from, the Cameroon colony and planted beans at Mampong. From these two centres, fifteen miles apart, the industry has established itself in every district of the colony and penetrated ten days’ march beyond Kumasi.

The organization is of the simplest kind—purely and solely a native industry, few of the plantations being large ones, none more than about twenty-five to thirty acres and the majority not more than two to five acres. We saw none owned by white men, although I believe there are one or two, which are, however, quite insignificant. The volume of cocoa which pours out from the Gold Coast colony flows almost exclusively from countless small holdings spread all over the hinterland. The farms are not so close together as those of San Thomé, but the traveller cannot walk many miles anywhere without passing through the plantations of cocoa and palm trees.

The atmospheric conditions resemble the Mayumbe country and San Thomé, the rainfall varying between 32.09 and 54.92 per annum, otherwise the territory is not so well watered as the Belgian and Portuguese possessions. In spite of this, the colony can produce a quantity and quality of cocoa that compares well with other areas. When at the Botanical Gardens of Aburi, we saw a plot of cocoa measuring one and two-fifths acres with 259 trees planted fifteen feet apart. The yield from this plot between October 23rd and December 31st, 1909, was 18,200 pods. Mr. Anderson, reporting upon this experimental plantation says, “Such results will not often be exceeded in any cocoa-growing country.”

In the year 1891, we almost see that Gold Coast native offering for sale the first harvest of cocoa. It is only 80 lbs. in weight and with the greatest ease he carries it to the white man’s store. To the amazement of his native friends the grower received £4 for that basket of cocoa!

Twenty years later the export of 80 lbs. weight has grown to nearly 90 millions. Since the day that the native husbandman disposed of his 80 lbs. of cocoa, the industry has never wavered. We were informed by white men who have been long on the coast that when the natives realized the value of cocoa there was an impetuous and overwhelming demand for seed until competition became so keen that a sovereign a bean was the general rate!

In 1902 the export had exceeded £100,000; in 1907 it had passed half-a-million, and in 1911 leaving gold in the rear of competition for first place it raced away beyond the finger post of a million and a half sterling. The whole of this, be it remembered, is a native industry!

The Gold Coast natives are justly proud of their extensive enterprise and assert that they will not cease extending their plantations until every acre they can cultivate and every man they can use is producing cocoa.

[Sidenote: THE COCOA CARRIER]

Not the least interesting spectacle in the Gold Coast is the transport of cocoa, the bulk of the inland produce being carried by porters to the railhead, and sometimes the roadways as far as the eye can penetrate are one long line of cocoa bags on the heads of hundreds of carriers. This carrying trade has produced an extraordinary flow of free labour into the whole hinterland of the Gold Coast. At Adawso, a buying station nearly fifteen miles from the railhead, one firm alone employs in the season over 3000 carriers who cover the distance to the rail station of Pakro once, frequently twice, a day with a bag of cocoa. The remuneration being according to the quantity carried, there is an eagerness to earn the maximum within the twelve hours of daylight. The men who leave by daybreak will return about three o’clock in the afternoon, often to pick up another load and carry it to the railhead, returning again by moonlight.

The carriers are mostly Hausas, but the fame of the Gold Coast carrier traffic has spread far into the northern regions of Africa with the result that recognized caravan routes now come right down through the northern territories. These carriers, many of them from around and even beyond Lake Chad, drive herds of cattle down to the Gold Coast colony about harvest time. They sell the cattle and then carry cocoa for the season. When the main harvest is over and there is little cocoa carrying, they will purchase loads of kola nuts which they carry back with them to the far interior and sell _en route_ at a considerable profit. Thus they make a threefold financial return—on the sale of cattle, cocoa carrying, and profits on the kola nut trade.

The transport of cocoa is chiefly in the hands of alien labour, and should the flow of this labour cease from any cause whatever, the cocoa industry would suffer a check from which it would take years to recover. The coastal regions are fairly secure, for most of the districts within twenty miles of the coast are reached by a daily service of motor lorries under the management of the European cocoa-buying firms. Many of the native farmers within thirty miles of Accra, however, with true African trading instinct prefer selling their cocoa at a higher price at the port of embarkation, and so have created the interesting system of “barrel rolling.” In the season these strongly bound and ponderous casks are purchased from the European stores, filled with cocoa, and rolled to the sea-shore. Travelling along the somewhat primitive Gold Coast roads one meets at frequent intervals perspiring natives struggling with the barrels which, filled with cocoa, weigh considerably over half-a-ton. They may be “holding on” to a barrel racing down a steep incline, or three of them straining their utmost to force the ponderous weight up a steep hill. Occasionally they come to grief, for we saw more than one cask which had fallen over a cliff into a deep gorge below. Generally speaking, three men will undertake to roll two barrels to the coast, the three concentrating their efforts upon a single barrel going uphill, while on the level road or down hill they control the two barrels between them. We met three such men who had rolled two casks for twenty-five to thirty miles, a task of two days, for which they receive 20_s._ per cask.

[Sidenote: TRANSPORT DIFFICULTIES]

The problem which faces administrator, merchant and native producer is that of transport. This threatens to become acute, for we were informed by a merchant who recently journeyed beyond Kumasi that large consignments of cocoa were lost owing to the lack of transport facilities. At the same time, given a fair price for cocoa in the home market, just treatment for transport labourers, the extension of roads and light railways, there is no reason why a single ton of cocoa should fail to reach the coast.

In the Gold Coast colony the white man occupies his normal position in the tropics—the connecting link or middle-man between the European manufacturer and the native producer. The Government very wisely endeavours to keep the industry in the hands of the native farmers and assists them by sending lecturers through the colony, whose duty it is to advise the farmers upon pruning, fermentation, drying, the danger of pests, and the general principles of modern agricultural science. With inherent instinct, the British Government recognizes that the real asset of the colony is the indigenous inhabitant, whose material and moral progress is not only the first, but the truest interest of the State.

The other British colony in which cocoa has a future is Southern Nigeria. To read the Government reports of ten years ago there seemed little hope that the natives of this colony would become cocoa farmers, or indeed that they would ever do much more than vegetate in the agricultural world. Africa is the land of surprises, and more and more the African is surprising Europe by exploding “the lazy nigger theory.”

The Acting Secretary of Southern Nigeria, writing his 1903 report from Old Calabar, said:—

“With every year that passes, it becomes increasingly
important that new exports, indicating new areas of work and
development, should make an appearance on the export lists of
the Protectorate. That ‘Palm Oil’ and ‘Palm Kernels’ will ever
cease to be the dominant products is more than unlikely; but
these products demand nothing from the native in the way of
labour that the veriest bushman cannot carry out. Portions of
this Protectorate must be gradually turned over—and education
may succeed, where persuasion fails—to the production of other
commodities. It is not in the nature of the average West
African to lay out capital for which there is no immediate
return. He can understand the yam growing at his door; he can
understand the cask of oil to be filled before his ‘boys’ can
return with the required cloth, pipe, or frock-coat, but he
will not sow for his son to reap; nor will a village work, of
its own initiative, for the benefit of the next generation
that is to occupy it. It is this difficulty that has rendered
so great the task of encouraging the rubber industry. It is
for this reason that cocoa and coffee have never been properly
taken up by the natives themselves.”

This is just what the Belgian and German Governments are proclaiming to-day.

[Sidenote: DOUBLING THE OUTPUT]