Page:The future of Africa.djvu/90

84 stands before us "without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots," and yet at times with the seeming semblance of vitality.

I cite no evidences; for already in this address I have shown the suicidal and retributive nature of all selfish isolation—of all misanthropic exclusiveness; and, at the same time, I have given the historic proof that there can be no national vitality or progress, without a community of thought and sentiment, and the interchange of products and commodities, between different countries. And from all this we may learn our duty. We have a genial clime, a most productive soil, a population not large, but of peculiar fitness to the capacity and the productions of the soil and to the demands of commerce. We grow here sugae and coffee; the cane has a richness and endurance in this land, as is acknowledged, beyond that of Cuba or Louisiana; and coffee here gives a larger yield to the tree, and for a longer period, than in most other countries. Other articles arrest our attention: Indigo, with a small capital, under the new French process of preparation, can be made to yield at least 8^00 per acre; for Indigo brings, at Liverpool and New York, nigh three dollars per pound. The Cinnamon will grow here; the experiment of its growth has just been proved successful at Cape Coast, and we should have larger groves of it. and are both of tropical growth—both in great demand in all the markets of the world, and lucrative in trade. You know the high value of, and its great demand;