COFFEE COUNTRIES. 265 



not lately exceed from 600 to 800 tons annually. 

 The product of the eastern provinces of Africa, 

 taken in connection with the small crops raised on 

 the west coast, makes Africa contribute between 

 3,000 and 4,000 tons to the world's production, the 

 amount including Coffee grown in Egypt and the 

 interior countries of the continent ; and this simply 

 means that the Coffee growing (except perhaps in 

 the extreme south) is all done by natives, and 

 Ceylon planters will know what this means. 



The following letter, written especially for this 

 chapter by one of the most popular of those 

 explorers who are rapidly opening up the " Dark 

 Continent," will be read with interest: 



COFFEE IN AFRICA. 



" The Coffee plant is one of the few useful economic 

 products that the African flora has as yet given to the world. 

 The genus CofTcea divided into many species is practically 

 indigenous to the African continent, for the wild Coffee in 

 Arabia only inhabits the mountain slopes of the western shore 

 of that peninsula where it faces the African mainland. Whilst 

 Coffee grows wild over most parts of tropical Africa, its cultiva- 

 tion in the Dark Continent is very slight and partial at present, 

 although it offers a future of boundless development. Almost 

 the only part of Africa that I know of wherein Coffee planting 

 is carried on by the natives of the soil, and not by aliens of 

 European or Arabian descent, is Northern Angola. It is 

 possible that here the idea sprang originally from Portuguese 

 tuition, but, nevertheless, in many districts lying between the 

 Lower Congo and Angola, wherein no white man has yet 

 penetrated, Coffee planting and gathering is carried on by the 



