1886.] MISCELLANEOUS. 723 



sent to England from sixty to eighty tons of pnlp weekly, to be used 

 in the printing of daily and other papers. Here was an industry 

 hitherto confined to the Continent, and yet, why need those foreign 

 manufacturers be allowed thus to monopolize an industry for which 

 we had such abundant facilities at home ? The thinnings of Scotch 

 fii's and spruces, six inches in diameter, were the wood most suitable 

 for being reduced to pulp of this kind ; at present much of this 

 wood was used only for the fire, or allowed to rot, as perfectly useless, 

 and yet with enterprise and capital it might be rendered quite as 

 valuable as the paper pulp imported from abroad. Again, there was 

 much wood required as prop wood for mines, and this could be 

 supplied by the thimiings of the Scotch fir, which in five years 

 required thinning again. Then there was match-making. Matches 

 were a most important and essential item of our trade ; and yet, 

 notwithstanding all our facilities for growing the alder tree and 

 other wood suitable for the manufacture of matches, we imported 

 from Sweden and other northern countries most of the matches we 

 use. 



DiscovEEY OF Towns and Dense Foeests in West Africa. — 

 The Dresden Times of February 16th publishes a letter from the 

 African traveller Herr Schwarz, who was called last autumn to a 

 post in the German Foreign Office. The letter, which is dated on 

 board ship off Goree, Senegambia, January 27th, gives an account 

 of Herr Schwarz's travels in the inland districts of the Cameroons. 

 The writer says that he followed the great caravan route to the 

 Calabar Elver, and after reaching Bakandu, on the confines of teni- 

 tory already explored, he continued his journey eastward into a 

 region of which all hitherto existing maps are untrustworthy, and 

 which is rigorously guarded by jealous tribes. Pursuing his way 

 through far-reaching primeval forests, rich in gum trees and wild 

 coffee, and teeming with elephants, Herr Schwarz, crossing the 

 Kumba Eiver, reached the territory of Bason, which he found 

 studded with densely populated towns. This district, from which 

 the people dwelling on the coast obtain ivory, oil, and slaves, is a 

 very picturesque and comparatively well-cultivated plateau. The 

 inhabitants, called Bafaraini, who are engaged in agriculture and 

 cattle-rearing, have, up to the present, not even been known by 

 name. Herr Schwarz's further advance was arrested in the vicinity 

 of the Upper Calabar by a party of five hundred armed negroes, in 

 consequence of which the African traveller returned to the coast by 

 the Mungo Eiver, the voyage, which was made in canoes, occupying 

 several days. 



