Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/672

 Herr Fredericksky most kindly showed me all over his plantation. When it was first started the cautious planter then in charge planted coffee and oil-palms so as to have something to fall back on should the coffee fail, and to a considerable extent coffee has failed throughout Victoria. It gets afflicted with a sort of blight analogous to honey-dew, and on this honey-dew grows a large black mildew which mats the coffee-berries together and ruins them, although it does not seem to injure the health of the tree much. But cacao flourishes exceedingly in the Victoria district, and has so far got no disease. And so the coffee in this plantation, and in the native plantations round Ambas Bay, is being replaced by cacao, and to such purpose has this plan been followed, that the profit on the latter product exported by the small native growers last year amounted to £1,000 English, and this large plantation ships on an average 400 bags a month. During the two flushes which occur in the year, as many as 600 and 650 bags a month would be shipped; during the intermediate seasons 200 to 300.

The enterprise with which capital has been expended here, and the judiciousness with which it has been employed, is very remarkable for a West Coast undertaking, wherein, as a general rule, there is usually one without the other, or a notable absence of both.

There are near to the living house large, well-built houses with the proper machinery for drying the cocoa, after it has been properly fermented and washed in another house, that is away at the further end of the plantation where the fermenting house is established, because of a suitable little river; and wonderful to relate these two sets of houses are connected by an excellent tramway, very carefully and soundly made, and ten times pleasanter and safer to travel on than the Congo Free State Railway. The little cars on which you, or bags of cocoa, sit are pushed by energetic labourers; a distinct improvement on West African steam-engines. After conscientiously doing the drying and the fermenting sheds, and enjoying the faint but pleasant smell of the mauve-coloured cocoa in heaps on the floors in various states of fermentation, we proceeded to seriously study cacao growing; and I was taken by the two