CHAPTER II. 

 PALM OIL AND KERNELS. 



FIRST, perhaps, in commercial importance, among the 

 oil products of West Africa, is that of the oil palm; 

 there is an enormous supply of this commodity in the 

 country which at present rots on the ground, and which 

 might be turned to profitable account by very shrewd 

 enterprise, working on more economical lines than the 

 majority of present plantation companies in West Africa. 

 The oil palm,* which is indigenous to West Africa, 

 from Senegal and Bissagos on the north to the Congo 

 Basin and Angola on the south, is most prolific from 

 Sierra Leone to the Cameroons from the seaboard to- 

 wards the interior, diminishing in those districts where 

 the climate becomes drier, or where rocky and moun- 

 tainous tracts intervene. It is rarely found beyond 

 200 miles from the coast. The most suitable situation 

 is where the soil is generally moist. Swampy, ill-drained 

 land is not favourable. In those parts of the country 

 where there is gravelly laterite over a deep substratum 

 of syenite, trees may abound in considerable numbers, 

 but the trunks of such trees do not acquire the same 

 thickness as those growing in damper or lighter ground. 

 No distinct varieties are recognised by the natives, 

 although distinctive names are applied to the same fruit 

 in different stages of development. Yet there is great 

 disparity between oil palms, both in yield and quality, 

 to the extent of 30 per cent. Some have thin pericarps, 



* See " Sierra Leone : Its People, Products, and Secret Societies." 



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