,178 



HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE. 



Part I. 



1080. Benin is an extensive country, very productive of fruits, trees, and plants ; including the orange, 

 cocoa, cotton, &c. and abounding in animals, among which is enumerated civet cats, and a sort of hairy 

 sheep. Agriculture, however, is little attended to, the chief object being the commerce of slaves. 

 1081. The inhabitants of I.oango, instead of cultivating the land, content themselves with bread and fish, 

 and such fruits, greens, and pulse, as the soil naturally produces. Cocoas, oranges, and lemons, are not 

 much cultivated ; but sugar-canes, cassia, and tobacco, as well as the palm, banana, cotton, and pimento- 

 trees, grow here plentifullj'. They have also a great variety of roots, herbs, fruits, grain, and other 

 vegetables, of which they make bread, and which they use for food. They have few quadrupeds for 

 domestic use, except goats and hogs, but poultry and various sorts of game are abundant : among the 

 wild beasts they have the zebra, and a great number of elephants, whose teeth they exchange with the 

 Europeans for iron. 



1082. Congo is an extensive and very fertile country ; but the inhabitants are indolent, and neglect its 

 culture. The operations of digging, sowing, reaping, cutting wood, grinding corn, and fetching water, 

 they leave to their wives and slaves. Under their management, several sorts of grain and pulse is culti- 

 vated, especially maize, of which they have two crops in a year ; but such is the heat of the climate, that 

 Wheat will not produce plump seeds ; it shoots rapidly up into the straw and ear ; the former high enough 

 to hide a man on horseback, and the latter unfilled. Grass grows to a great height, and affords sheltering 

 places for a number of wild animals and noisome repfiles and insects. The Portuguese have introduced a 

 variety of palm and other fruit trees, which are better adapted for producing human food in such a climate. 



1083. The boabab (Adansonia digitata) is a native of Congo. This tree, discovered by the celebrated 

 French botanist, Adanson, is considered the largest in the world : several, measured by this gentle- 

 man, were from sixty-five to seventy-eight feet in circumference, but not extraordinarily high. The 

 trunks were from twelve to fifteen feet high, before they divided into many horizontal branches, which 

 touched the ground at their extremities ; these were from forty-five to fifty-five feet long, and were so 

 large, that each branch was equal to a monstrous tree ; and where the water of a neighboring river had 

 washed away the earth so as to leave the roots of one of these trees bare and open to the sight, they 

 measured one hundred and ten feet long, without including those parts of the roots which remained covered. 

 It yields a fruit which resembles a gourd, and which 

 serves for vessels of various uses; the bark of which fur- 

 nishes them with a coarse thread, which they form into 

 ropes and into a cloth, with which the natives cover their 

 middle from the girdle to the knees ; and the small leaves 

 of which supply them with food in a time of scarcity, while 

 the large ones are used for covering their houses, or by 

 burning for the manufacture of good soap. At Sierra-leone, 

 this tree does not grow larger than an orchard apple 

 tree. 



1084. Of the baric of the infanda tree, and also of the 

 mulemba, resembling in many respects our laurel, they 

 form a kind of stuff or cloth, which is fine, and used for 

 cloaks and girdles by persons of the highest rank. The 

 oil of their palm-trees is used instead of butter ; with the 

 moss that grows about the trunk, the rich commonly 

 stuff their pillows ; and the Giagas apply it to their wounds 

 with goed effect : with the leaves the Moors cover their 

 houses, and they draw from these trees, by incision, a 

 pleasant liquor like wine, which, however, turns sour in 

 five or six days. 



1085. Among other fruits and roots, they have the vine, 

 which was brought thither from Candia, and yields grapes 

 twice a year. 



1086. The live stock common to other agricultural coun- 

 tries, are here much neglected ; but the Portuguese 

 settlers have directed their attention to cows, sheep, and 

 goats, chiefly on account of their milk. Like most parts 



of Africa, this country swarms with wild animals. Among 



these, the zebra, buffalo, and wild ass, are hunted, and 7T2 

 made useful as food or in commerce. The dante, a kind >t'^ 

 of ox, whose skins are sent into Germany to be tanned and ^ 

 made into targets, called " dantes," abounds, and also the ^ 

 cameleon, a great variety of monkies, {fig. 179.), and all the 

 sorts of domestic poultry and game. 



SuBSECT. 5. Present Stale of Agriculture at the Cape of Good Hope. 



1087. The^ Butch colonized the Cajye of Good Hope in 1660, and the English obtained 

 possession of it in 1795. 



1088. The climate of this cape is not unfriendly to vegetation ; but it is so situated 

 within the influence of periodical winds, that the rains are very unequal, descending in 

 torrents during the cold season, though hardly a shower falls to refresh the earth in the 

 hot summer months, when the dry south-east winds prevail. These winds blast the 

 foliage, blossom, and fruit, of all those trees that are not well sheltered ; nor is the human 

 constitution secure against their injurious influence. As a protection from these winds 

 the colonists who inhabit the nearest side of the first chain of mountains, beyond which^ 

 their effect does not very sensibly extend; divide that portion of their ground which 

 is appropriated to fruit groves, vineyards, and gardens, by oak screens; but they leave 

 their corn lands altogether open. The temperature of the climate at the Cape is re- 

 markably affected by local circumstances. In summer the thermometer is generally be- 

 tween 70 and 80,' and sometimes between 80 and 90, but scarcely ever exceeds 95^ 



1089. The surface of the country consists of some mountains and extensive barrenl 

 like plains. The upper regions of all the chains of mountains are naked masses of sand- 

 stone ; the vallies beneath theta are clothed with grass, with thickets, and in some cases 

 with impenetrable forests. The inferior hills or knolls, whose surfaces are generally 

 composed of loose fragments of sandstone, as well as the wide sandy plains that connect 

 them, are thinly strewed over with heaths and other shrubby plants, exhibiting to the 

 eye an uniform and dreary appearance. In the lowest part of these plains, where the 



