290 COMMERCIAL PROSPECTS 



than £2 10s. a ton. On the other hand, I am not certain vvhetlier 

 Uganda wonhl produce the local labour for the cofifee plantations as cheap 

 as that which would be obtained in British Central Africa. Perhaps on 

 the whole the advantages of the two Protectorates for coffee -plan ting are 

 about equal. 



Regarding the soil of Uganda proper and the adjoining Districts of 

 Busoga and Toro, Mr. Alexander Whyte says : " Generally speaking, this 

 soil is a reddish loam on a subsoil of rich red or chocolate clay, sometimes 

 of a great depth. At times patches of poor, gravelly soil crop up, more 

 especially on the hilltops. These are formed of disintegrated ironstone 

 or igneous rock, and do not retain the moisture. The country is wonder- 

 fully free from surface stones and boulders. . . . The soil of the swamps 

 and marshes is a black humus, formed by the decay of rank vegetation. One 

 would naturally expect to find a deep deposit of this, mixed with soil washed 

 down from the surrounding hills; on the contrary, I have been surprised to 

 find this black deposit often very shallow and almost invariably overlaying a 

 subsoil of kaolin clay. . . . The question generally put is, What will not 

 grow and flourish in Uganda? The furze and the broom grow so well that 

 we are making hedges of them. Tomatoes grow quite wild. One plant was 

 left by the boys when weeding my compound. It flourished so amazingly 

 that I determined to keep tally of the fruits picked from it. The yield in 

 two months has been 3,000 ! It still goes on bearing clusters of lovely fruits, 

 and covers a space of twenty feet square." 



I give here a photograph of a sunflower in the Botanical Gardens at 

 Entebbe which grew up in a few weeks, and produced more than 200 

 blossoms, all of them yielding seed full of excellent oil. 



Oats thrive well on lofty regions like the Nandi Plateau. Up to the 

 present time wheat in Uganda has not been a great success. Inasmuch, 

 however, as it has proved a success in German East Africa to the south of 

 the lake, our comparative failure })robably means that we did not select 

 the right kind of wheat for the very varying altitudes of the Uganda 

 Protectorate. As to Indian corn, sorghum, millet, eleusine, and other 

 grains native to Africa or India, they flourish exceedingly, and are at any 

 rate excellent and sustaining food for the natives. 



The sesamum and ground-nut grow in many districts, and could be 

 converted locally into an oil of considerable commercial value. The 

 fibre of the raphia })alm, of three or four species of Hibiscus, and of the 

 Sanseviera might be worth exporting. The Baganda make excellent 

 ropes out of locally produced fibre. Tobacco grows almost everywhere in 

 Uganda, but whether it could possibly compete with the tobaccos of the 

 West Indies, India, and Borneo is doubtful. But it forms a very notable 

 object of sale and barter amongst the natives, being eagerly purchased from 



