98 COCOA AND CHOCOLATE 



cacao on their heads. " Women and children, light- 

 hearted, chattering and cheerful, bear their 60 Ibs. 

 head-loads with infinite patience. Heavier loads, ap- 

 proaching sometimes 

 two hundredweight, 

 are borne by grave, 

 silent Hausa-men, 

 often a distance of 

 thirty or forty miles. " 

 One day, not so 

 many years ago, some 

 more ingenious native 

 in the hills at the back 

 of the Coast, filled an 

 old palm-oil barrel 

 with cacao and rolled 

 it down the ways to 

 Accra. And now to- 

 day it is a familiar sight 

 to see a man trundling 

 a huge barrel of cacao, 

 weighing half a ton, 

 down to the coast. The 

 sound of a motor horn 

 is heard, and he wildly 

 turns the barrel aside 

 to avoid a disastrous 

 collision with the new, 



DRYING CACAO BEANS AT MRAMRA. weird transport ani- 



mal from Europe. 



Reproduced by permission from the Imperial Institute TV/T^*-^*. \K~~\~C U 

 series of Handbooks to the Commercial Resources of IVlOtOr lOmCS naVC 



been used with great 



effect on the coast for -some seven years ; they have 

 the advantage over pack animals that they do not 

 succumb to the bite of the dreaded tsetse fly, but 

 nevertheless not a few derelicts lie, or stand on their 

 heads, in the ditches, the victims of over-work or 

 accident. 



Having brought the cacao to the coast, there yet 



