406 PLAN RECOMMENDED FOR 



the first few years little more may be done than 

 repaying the current expenses, it holds out to 

 those who enter into the trade, determined not 

 to be elated by any temporary success, or cast 

 down by unexpected losses, a prospect of creat- 

 ing in a few years an extensive and profitable traf- 

 fic — one unfettered by tariff's, and which has not 

 yet, nor is likely to be, blighted by legislature — 

 one that only requires the extinction of the slave- 

 trade to make it rank in importance with any 

 carried on by British enterprise and capital. 



It will be objected to this plan by those 

 acquainted with the existing trade, that the 

 chiefs upon the coast will refuse to supply oil to 

 the vessels at the mouth of the river if a trade 

 were carried on with the interior. Nothing, in 

 my opinion, is more fallacious. As soon as they 

 discover that a trade can be carried on without 

 them, they will exert themselves in collecting oil 

 from all the villages below Eboe and through- 

 out the Delta, which it would not be the interest 

 of, and in fact impossible for, Europeans to trade 

 with direct. Trading direct with the Eboes 

 will have the effect of making these people collect 

 oil, and become competitors with the Eboes, up- 

 on whose industry they now subsist. As to their 



