374 FUTURE PROSPECTS OF BRITISH EAST AFRICA part hi 



yielding plants abound all over the country, but the amount 

 used is insignificant. Cotton, coffee, and tea are grown on the 

 German plantations in the Witu protectorate, in German East 

 Africa, and in Nyasaland. The British East Africa Company 

 attempted to grow cotton, but the effort did not succeed, though 

 the causes for this failure are preventible. The cotton from 

 the German plantations at Ras Tchagga, in the British pro- 

 tectorate, is a very good staple, but the quantity raised is very 

 small, and the amount exported from Zanzibar to Europe in 

 1893 was worth less than ^^3. There are, however, in the 

 interior, wide tracts of country well adapted for cotton planta- 

 tions, but it is difficult to see how this cotton could compete 

 with that from the Southern States of America. 



Still, the success of the settlement at Blantyre shows that 

 some areas in Tropical Africa can be made to yield a consider- 

 able quantity of produce of sufficient value to pay for carriage 

 to England. The profits are not likely to be great, and, so far, 

 it is only Scotchmen who have succeeded in this enterprise ; 

 but the Blantyre colony has proved that men who have 

 sufficient farsightedness and capital to be able to work and 

 to wait, and to be contented with " small profits, slow returns," 

 may reasonably hope for ultimate success. 



Patience and perseverance, however, are indispensable to 

 the development of the agricultural resources of the country, 

 and the only chance of sudden prosperity in East Africa is the 

 discovery of one or more of the precious metals or minerals in 

 considerable quantity. I have no intention of making any 

 definite prediction on this subject, for I did not go to Africa 

 as a mineral prospector ; and having no time to search properly, 

 I thought it better to leave this work alone than to risk 

 prejudicing the country by misleading negative results. The 

 difficulties of discovering metalliferous veins and of estimating 

 their value without extensive borings are so great, that a five 

 months' traverse of so wide an area can furnish no ground for 

 an opinion. Mining predictions are proverbially erroneous, 

 and the value of negative evidence and superficial scraping in 

 a hasty traverse is shown by the two following instances. 



Climbing one afternoon, in 1891, over the moraines of the 

 upper Arkansas River, I tried to fix the position of one 

 group of boulders by a bearing from the spire of the town-hall 



