-especially those who are sent-should not have taken up Africa as a pis-aller, as a last resource when they have failed elsewhere; but it should be their first love. They should as much prepare and be prepared for a deliberately-chosen African career as they would have been for service in India, China, or South America. Hitherto, as a general rule, our failures have gone to Africa-the second-rate people, the naughty people, the dissipated people, the bankrupt people, the people who had to be got rid of, the poor relations who had to be provided for. Fitness for an African career was until a very few years ago-scarcely ever inquired into as a preliminary before appointment. Anybody was thought good enough for Africa, because in many cases it did not much matter whether they lived or died. If they lived and pulled through after all, and really did creditable work, they were, as one might say, received back into civilization. When missionaries turned out a thorough and unexpected success in Africa, their parent society scratched its head and said, "Why, really So-and-So is good enough to send to India," and to India the happy man was translated. In the same way, in bygone days, consuls or colonial officials whom Africa would not kill, and who had not turned out so badly after all, were graciously picked out of this Slough of Despond and passed on to more favored portions of the globe. To volunteer for Africa was a desperate man's last hope. When you were over age and could not possibly get into the army in any other way, you entered it by means of the West India Regiment, which served on the West Coast of Africa. Now it is quite time that all this system-or want of systemwas changed. As continents go, Africa is quite as good as Asia or South America. The climate is not a bit worse than it is in the tropical portions of those continents. Indeed, I should say the danger to health is not quite so great, because there is no infectious yellow fever and no cholera. The most frequent cause of illness that I know of lies in the hideous, monotonous discomfort which characterizes the life we at present lead in the Dark Continent; but this is solely owing to a want of civilization which could be soon remedied. I mean, we ought to have decently comfortable houses to live in, pianos and piano-tuners, ice-making machines, good cooks, milch

cows, an improved breed of fowls, better beef, plenty of European vegetables, lending libraries, more comfortable passenger steamers, railways, and electric light.. Why, even in Cape Town the hansom cabs are of the style of slovenly discomfort of those which were in vogue in Great Britain in the '40's or '50's-possibly they are even the same individual cabs which, when they were thought unfit for further use in London, were shipped off to Africa. Why should not the cabs of Africa be as comfortable as the cabs of Melbourne and Bombay? Why should the soda-water made at Zanzibar be distinctly inferior to the soda-water in vogue throughout British India?

I have shown that Africa, in point of climate, is not worse than the other tropical continents; let us see now whether she has been less favored by nature in other ways. North Africa-the Mediterranean littoral with its countries of Morocco, Algeria, Tripoli, and Egypt-is quite as good in climate, soil, and productiveness as Southern Europe. That is a fact which no one who knows anything about it would dispute, and therefore I will pass from it without further comment. South of this favored region we have the great Sahara Desert, which stretches from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. Although this wilderness has become a byword for awful sterility and lifelessness, it is, as a matter of fact, endowed with a singularly abundant water supply-underground. The address recently delivered at the British Association for the Advancement of Science by Sir Lambert Playfair, her Majesty's ConsulGeneral in Algeria, puts before us very graphically what miraculous results have been brought about in the French Sahara by artesian wells, how unfailingly these have tapped an abundant water supply, and how, in some instances, one well alone threw into the air a column of water equal to 1,300 cubic metres daily, which is a quantity sufficient to redeem 1,800 acres from sterility, and to irrigate 60,000 palmtrees. I believe in this way the desert will soon be brought to blossom as the rose, and its cultivability, conjoined with its healthy climate-for it must be remembered that the Sahara has the climate of Egypt, where our invalids go to regain health-will cause the much despised Sahara Desert to become some day a very valuable possession to those European powers who have the

steady courage to develop its resources. But south of the Sahara Desert, south of about 12° north latitude down to the southern extremity of Africa, with the exception of a few arid patches in the Kalahari district and in Betshuanaland, the rain supply is more abundant and more regular than in Asia or in South America, and far more so than in Australia. Indeed, in some parts, such as the great equatorial forest, we positively need to thin the trees in order to produce a drier atmosphere and diminish the rain supply, which at present falls during eleven months out of twelve. In this two-thirds of Africa, south of the Sahara Desert, there is, I believe, a larger proportion of fertile, cultivable soil than in India, Australia, or South America. The fauna-especially in mammals-is more varied, and offers more useful and remarkable animals than that of either Asia or America. Among its domestic beasts and birds we find that cattle are able to thrive in a very large proportion of the continent, that sheep flourish wherever they have been tried, and that goats exist everywhere, scarcely any tribe being without them. Horses have now got acclimatized in South Africa, and immense numbers of them are bred in the Niger basin, North Central Africa, Abyssinia, and Somaliland, while the domestic ass is equally abundant in North-East Africa. Pigs thrive in the Dark Continent, as they seem to do everywhere; but European dogs, as a rule, rapidly degenerate. The Muscovy duck and the domestic fowl seem thoroughly suited to an African life, and turkeys, also, succeed very well. In fact, with the exception of a few districts in which horses and cattle are subject to the attack of the Tsetse fly, or various maladies resulting from poisonous grasses, Africa as a whole may be said to be exceptionally well adapted for the maintenance of live-stock. It must also be remembered that even the local conditions to which I have referred, such as the prevalence of fly or unwholesome herbage, do not offer permanent obstacles to the keeping of cattle or horses, inasmuch as in time either the fly disappears with the retreating wild animals and the poisonous herbage is got rid of, or the cattle and horses become inured to the attacks of the Tsetse and the unwholesome qualities of the grass. They are then what is termed 66 salted," and their descendants become

less and less affected by those poisons which have caused the death of so many of their progenitors; and no doubt they will eventually become as thoroughly adapted to their surroundings as are their close relations, the zebra and the buffalo, who are indifferent to the bite of the Tsetse fly, and either know how to avoid the poisonous grass, or else are able to eat it with impunity.

Among the wild animals indigenous to Africa which are profitable to commerce may be cited the elephant first of all. From the African elephant, indeed, the world's supply of ivory is almost exclusively drawn. The Ceylon elephant has no tusks at all, and the elephant of India and the Malay Archipelago, for what reason I cannot say, furnishes but little ivory to the market; so little, in fact, that the Chinese, Japanese, and Indians have to import ivory from Africa for the hundred and one graceful artistic objects which they manufacture. Next perhaps to gold and diamonds, ivory is the most valuable and profitable African product. As a rule, people are given to talking of it in a disparaging way, as a vanishing quantity, and not a source of wealth to be permanently calculated on. If proper steps were taken toward a judicious preservation of the elephant-especially the females-and its slaughter were to a certain extent controlled and organized, there is no reason why this magnificent beast should become extinct any more than has the Indian elephant. The Indian elephant does not breed in captivity, or, at least, a case only occurs once in fifty years. Practically you may say that every elephant you see in the East has been caught in a wild state when young. India the elephants are utilized as beasts of burden. In Africa possibly the same might be done, but in addition a certain number of the males might be killed annually for their ivory. Britain has secured, fortunately, a good share of the finest elephant country in Africa. In British South Central Africa, that is to say, all Nyasa. land, and the country to the north of the Upper Zambesi, the elephant is at present extraordinarily abundant. The same is the case, to perhaps an even greater extent, in British East Africa-Masailand-whence comes the best ivory in the world. again, we possess much of the country south of the Benue and at the back of the Oil Rivers, and before long we shall have

In

Then,

the Egyptian Soudan.

In all these countries elephants are still found in vast herds in spite of the reckless war waged against them by the natives. To have saved and domesticated this magnificent beast would be one of the proudest glories that could be attached to England's name. Why should we not, also, take in hand some of the other fine beasts which Africa has produced? Why should we not domesticate the zebra and the eland, that large, handsome, ox-like antelope? Our domestic ass is simply a very slightly altered descendant of the wild ass which is found in Abyssinia and the Galla Countries. The zebra is only another form of the wild ass found farther south. Why should it be more difficult to tame and utilize than its congener in Abyssinia? There are most interesting problems of this kind to be worked out, on which hitherto scarcely any one has tried his hand. In Asia man has tamed and utilized the elephant, the buffalo, the fowl, the wild ass, the pig, the goat, the sheep, the dog, and the camel. In Africa why should not we do the same with the African species of elephant, the African buffalo, the zebra, the larger antelopes, the wart-hog, and the river-hog! I reinember, by-the-by, seeing in a trader's farmyard at Brass, in the Oil Rivers, tame river-hogs running about with his domestic pigs, just as if for all the world they had undergone long generations of domestication. Why should we not make as much out of the several species of guinea fowl which range over nearly all Africa, and the many handsome African cranes and bustards, as we have out of the domestic fowl and turkey, and as we have lately done with the ostrich in South Africa? Some fifty years ago it seems to me, that the notion of domesticating the ostrich would have been deemed as ludicrously impossible as the experiments I now propose with the elephant and the zebra; and yet ostrich farming in South Africa has not only introduced a new and important source of wealth to that colony, but will probably result in the saving from extermination of the most remarkable form of bird now living on the earth. In the progress of the world it would be a cruel pity that man should heedlessly stamp ont the more beautiful or remarkable forms of life which at present co-exist with him on this planet. We should take steps to prevent the extermination of the lion and

the tiger, the rhinoceros and the kangaroo, just as much as we do the red deer, the European bison, or the elk. If they are not useful, they are either as beautiful or as picturesque as they are remarkable, and are as necessary to the interest and "color" of our lives as are the parks and open spaces which every growing town endeavors to preserve as islets of beauty in the midst of its utilitarian maze of bricks and mortar.

Let us

And now let us see what other sources of wealth Africa possesses in vegetables and minerals. In her flora she is singularly rich in plants and trees providing useful products, even in the comparatively sterile Sahara Desert, from which seemingly hopeless region comes some of the most valuable gum in the world. briefly enumerate and take into consideration some of the articles of commerce derived from African trees, shrubs, and herbs. The most valuable of all are the various kinds of rubber which are made from the sap of two species of Landolphia -a pretty trailing creeper found almost all over tropical Africa in one kind or another; also from a species of Euphorbia, and from a big tree allied to the Ficus indica, which is one of the chief sources of rubber supply in Asia. African rubber, according to its kind and according tc the better or worse manner in which it has been prepared for the market, is worth from £110 to £270 a ton. Next in value comes indigo, the well-known dye, which is derived from the leaves and flowers of a kind of bean. Indigo, like coffee, and possibly cotton, was originally indigenous to Africa. It is at present cultivated to a very slight extent in the Dark Continent, but grows wild over nearly all the tropical portion. Good indigo, such as comes from the Niger, is worth about £224 a ton. Next in importance may be cited the gums, which vary in price in the English market from £15 to £100 a ton. The principal kinds exported from Africa are gum arabic, gum tragacanth, and gum elemi, which are derived from various species of acacia, and chiefly from desert countries in or bordering on the Sahara; incense gum, which I believe is derived from a species of Copaifera, a tree which is found pretty well all over tropical Africa; and gum copal produced by one or two kinds of Trachylobium, which is also a widely distributed tree, and is found

right across Africa from Sierra Leone to Zanzibar. The more valuable copal, however, is obtained in a fossil state, especially in East Africa. I believe this form fetches a higher price than that which is derived fresh from the living tree. Then there is cotton, the cultivation of which in Egypt is one of the chief sources of wealth. The cotton plant grows wild over almost all tropical Africa, but is chiefly grown by man in Egypt, the Niger countries, in Nyasaland, and in the Zambezian valley; also in the Portuguese possessions of West Africa. The cultivation of cotton in Africa might be enormously extended, as, to judge by the appearance of the wild plant, the soil is nearly every where suitable. Good African cotton is, I believe, worth about £54 a ton. Another valuable article of commerce is the seed of a species of Amomum-the "grains of Paradise,' as they are often called-which are largely used in making spices and condiments. The species of Amomum which produces these seeds-seeds which are at present worth £40 a ton-grows all over tropical Africa. It has a beautiful pale mauve blossom, somewhat like the flower of a gladiolus in appearance, which grows on a very short stalk quite close to the ground, and independently of the leaf-shoots. Some time after the flower has faded away, in its stead you find a brilliant crimson pod with a number of black seeds inside surrounded by a sweetish pulp. The seed-pods in the Amomum are the favorite food of the gorilla and the chimpanzee. It is very curious to reflect that it was these grains of Paradise"-sometimes called the Malaguetta pepper, the seeds of this Amomum, in fact-which first attracted our forefathers to Western Africa. They did not go there, as might be imagined, for slaves or for gold, in the first instance. They followed in the wake of the Portuguese in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to obtain these Amomum seeds from the West Coast of Africa. Why our ancestors in the Elizabethan period were so fond of spice in their food as to create a whole trade for its supply, and thus lay the foundations of a British African Empire, I cannot think. The same craving gave rise to the many quadrangular quarrels between English, Dutch, Spaniards, and Portuguese for the Spice Islands of the Eastern seas. Up to the present day a certain portion of the West African

Coast from Sierra Leone to the eastern boundaries of Liberia, is called the "Grain Coast" after these " grains of Paradise," which proved such a bait to the earlier navigators, Portuguese, English and Dutch, Normans, Danes, and Brandenburgers, as to draw them through the stormy seas of the North Atlantic to the unhealthy Guinea coast, where they afterward learned to trade for slaves and gold, and subsequently for palm oil.

This latter product-palm oil-has played such an important part in the development of Western Africa, especially of the Niger delta, of Lagos, and of the Cameroons, that I may perhaps not be wearying you if I dilate somewhat on its nature and the method of its production. The tree which produces it is the Elais Guineënsis, one of the handsomest species of palm in the world. Although the oilpalm of a somewhat poorer variety is found on the island of Pemba, near Zanzibar, and in one or two other parts of East Africa and Nyasaland, still it may be generally said that as a species it is practically confined to Western Equatorial Africa. It is met with all over the Congo basin and Lower Niger, and on a narrow fringe of coast from Senegambia to Benguela. But it is found in the most marked abundance in the district between Lagos and the Cameroons, and that is why the innumerable rivers and creeks which canalize this region are called the Oil Rivers-in fact the oilpalm has been the saviour of this part of West Africa. It offered in the past when the slave trade ceased and other sources of wealth were unknown, the only inducement to Europeans to settle and trade in these unhealthy swamps. So profitable, in fact, was the palm-oil trade at one time that by the money and men it poured into the Oil Rivers it positively succeeded in improving the health of the country. That is to say, it was the cause of better men being sent out, better houses being built, better doctors being maintained to look after the traders' health, a better service of mail steamers being established; and in short has been as much the cause of the transformation of a hideously-uncomfortable, vilely-unhealthy swamp into a prosperons, pleasing, thriving, not very unhealthy British possession, as the French artesian wells have been the cause of turning the sandy wastes of the Sahara into valuable forests of date palms.

This palm oil, which still forms the staple of West African trade, is made from the outer cover or husk of the nut of the Elais Guineensis. The natives of the interior, who are the main producers, climb up the smooth palm stem and cut down the great branch of orange-colored nuts when they are ripe. The nuts are pulled off the spiky raceme and handed over to the women, who pare off their oleaginous husks into a clay or iron pot half filled with water. This is heated over a fire until almost all the oil from the fibrous husks rises to the surface of the boiling water. The oil is skimmed off repeatedly and builed once or twice again. When cold it often becomes thick and butter-like, and is of a rich red golden color. Some varieties of oil, however, always remain transparent and liquid, but I believe the semisolid kind is thought the best. The native women of the interior collect this oil in little earthenware pots, after preparing it in the way described, and bring it to some local market where they meet the middlemen of the coast-the native traders of Benin, Brass, Borny, Opobo, or Old Calabar. These men bring up in their canoes casks, which they have obtained from the white men, and into these casks is poured the oil brought down by the interior natives in their small measures. The middlemen purchase the oil very cheaply with European goods. There is generally one, and there are sometimes two seasons in the year, during which the middlemen proceed into the interior to buy up the oil -seasons which are dependent on the depth of the rivers and creeks as increased or diminished by the state of the rainfall. The white trader, therefore, receives the oil in relatively large quantities at the hands of the middlemen, that is to say in the casks which he has himself supplied. As the middleman is much given to adulteration, the oil is careful y boiled and tested by the white trader before it is purchased, and as you sit chatting with a trading agent on his cool veranda, it is a common sight to see the burly-headed Kruman enter, touching an imaginary forelock with respect, and holding in his hand a shining copper pan with a long handle, in which lies a sample of golden liquid oil. The trader, with an apology for interrupting the conversation, scans this critically, and, by dint of long experience, decides as to its quality and the price to

be paid for it. The cask, as landed by the native trader, is generally sampled by means of a long scoop, in shape somewhat like a razor-strop, which is thrust down through the bung of the cask from end to end, and brings up a complete section of the oil through the whole diameter of the cask's contents, thus showing whether or not it is good all through. The native trader is usually paid for his oil or other produce by a cheque, or "book," as it is locally called, a note of credit, so to speak, for the amount. This he can present for payment whenever he pleases. The payment is generally reckoned by piece" meaning a picce of cloth-which is equivalent to 5s. in value, and when the native trader comes to present his book," he receives its value in goods of whatever kind he chooses to select from the store. Money transactions at present scarcely exist in the Oil Rivers, although they are just beginning to come into vogue with regard to the payment of native servants.

66

After the oil-producing husk has been stripped off the palm nut, the shell is cracked and the kernel taken out. This is the well-known "palm kernel," which is second in importance to palm oil in the West African trade. These kernels are brought down in tubs, and the white merchant purchases them at a cheaper rate per weight than the palm oil. They are usually sent to England to have their valuable oil expressed. Even after the palm nut has yielded up its oily husk and kernel, the refuse that remains the fibrous shell-is still of value, for it can be either converted into a very profitable form of fuel for steamers, or into manure for gardens, or even food for cattle.