Liberia ■*- 



have penetrated so early to the remotest parts of the Niger 

 Basin. It is perhaps at the present day the most widespread 

 cultivated plant throughout Tropical Africa, and the one which 

 has entered most closely into the category of native wants. Yet 

 a careful inquiry always results in its origin being traced back to 

 the intercourse with America which began in the sixteenth century. 

 There is distinct evidence of smoking having occurred long 

 before the introduction of tobacco, but it was hemp that was 

 smoked, and not tobacco. Hemp is almost universal as a 

 cultivated plant throughout Africa, but probably had an Oriental 

 origin, and the vice of hemp-smoking reached Tropical Africa 

 perhaps as much as a thousand years before tobacco-smoking was 

 established. I have not noticed hemp-growing or smoking 

 anywhere in Liberia except by Americo-Liberian Negroes of 

 Congo origin, nor have I ever heard hemp-smoking amongst 

 the indigenes alluded to by other travellers in that country. 

 Tobacco is used as snuff by some of the interior tribes, but the 

 smoking of it and the use of pipes are much more prevalent than 

 snuff-taking. The use of tobacco as snuff possibly preceded in 

 Africa the custom of tobacco-smoking, but it does not seem a 

 common practice in Liberia. 



The staple of the Negro's food in Liberia is either rice,' 

 manioc, or yam. These substances are usually cooked by 

 steaming or boiling, and are then served in large wooden bowls. 

 The natives sit round these bowls, and generally have in addi- 

 tion some appetiser, such as palm oil, which is often poured 

 over the rice or yam, or a palm-oil stew, in which any meat 

 procurable is cooked. Rice is sometimes parched and then 



' There are two or even three kinds of rice in Liberia: a good kind, fairly 

 wlille, wliicli lias been no doubt introduced by Europeans and Americans; a red 

 rice, possibly of Eastern origin ; and a small semi-wild grain known as " manikoro," 

 with a lilarkish luisk This kind, which ripens very quickly, is said to have been 

 brought by the Mandingos. 



994 



