OIL-SEEDS AND OILS 125 



difference : for the Sunne riseth and goeth downe there 

 commonly at sixe of the clocke, but it is risen at least halfe 

 an houre above the Horizon before it sheweth itself so that 

 you shall seldom see it cleerely rise or goe downe. 



' They shun the raine and esteeme it to be very ill and 

 unwholesome to fall upon their naked bodies, which they do 

 not without great reason, for wee find ourselves to bee much 

 troubled therewith when we travell. . . . 



' Specially the Raine under the Equinoctiall Line is so 

 unwholesome and rotten that if a man hath been in the Raine 

 and is thorow wet, and so Heth downe to sleepe in his cabin, 

 in his wet clothes, without putting them off, he is in danger 

 to get some sicknesse for it breedeth fevers. . . . And they 

 find no less unwholesomenesse therein, for wnen it begins 

 to rain they get them out of the way and if any drops fall 

 upon their naked bodies they shiver and shake as if they 

 had a Fever, and cast their Armes over their shoulders to keep 

 the Raine from them ; which they do not because the water 

 is cold, for oftentimes it is so warm as if it were sodden : but 

 because of the unwholesomenesse for their bodies, which they 

 find thereby. And when they have trodden in the daytime 

 in the water with their feet, at night they make a fire, and lie 

 with the soles of their feet against it, which they doe to draw 

 the moysture of the water, which is gotten into their bodies, out 

 againe at their feet : then they anoint their bodies with Palme 

 Oyle, which they also use for a beautifying to make their bodies 

 shine, and that they doe to shunne the Raine water (which) 

 within those Countreys (as many men write) is very unwhole- 

 some and thereof many dangerous diseases are engendered.' 1 



SOURCES OF SUPPLY. Though the oil palm grows to a certain 

 extent in other parts of the world where the climate and soil 

 are suitable (as, for instance, Central Africa, and the West 

 Indies, and Guiana), yet the amount of oil at present produced 

 in those places is so small compared with the output from 

 West Africa as to be entirely negligible. 



Unlike rubber and copra, palm oil is not yet a plantation 

 product ; the great forests stand as they have always stood, 

 and the methods of collecting and preparing oil to-day differ 

 but little from those in vogue in the remote past. 



1 ' Description of Guinea, A.D. 1600.' 



