2o5 Vojjage of the Novara. 



selves to the laying out of Vanilla plantations. The fruit, 

 from six to ten inches in length, by three to five lines in width, 

 of a dark brown colour, flexible, and somewhat unctuous to the 

 touch, requires about five months to ripen. They are care- 

 fully dried, first in the shade and afterwards in the sun, and 

 are then packed away in bundles in air-tight metal cases. 

 One hundred pounds of fresh pods yield about one pound 

 of the Vanilla of commerce. Formerly the value of a pound 

 of Vanilla was as high as £6 sterling, but it is at present 

 sold at about £4. 



In the beautifully situated Hotel Belleuve, where we lived 

 while at Buitenzorg, we chanced to become acquainted with a 

 curious individual, a young negro named Aquasie Boachi, son 

 of an African prince of Coomassie, the chief city of the king- 

 dom of Ashantee on the Gold Coast,* who, while a child of 

 nine years, had been sent by the colonial government to Eu- 

 rope, in order to be educated in Germany. It was the inten- 

 tion to make apparent what early education and instruction 

 can do for the negro, and how the present low state of the black 

 race is principally attributable to their oppression hitherto, and 

 to the limited application, in their case, of European civil- 

 ization. The experiment proved most satisfactory. Aquasie 

 Boachi speaks German, English, Dutch, and French quite 

 fluently, and holds a diploma, as mining engineer, from the 



* It is wt'U known that Holland in former days recruited her black regiments 

 of the Netherland Indies by men from the Gold Coast, and in fact had set on foot 

 a sort of traffic in men with the king of Ashantee. 



