FORESTRY OF WEST AFRICA. 



113 



For most of the foregoing we are indebted to the 

 Portuguese Possessions, as will be explained in the 

 under-given statistics for like years : — 



Since 1872 there has been a tax on this import 

 into the United Kingdom of 14J. per cwt. on raw 

 coffee ; and on kiln dried, roasted or ground, of 2d. 

 per lb. 



Maybe it is providential that coffee should take the 

 lead as an agricultural industry in West Africa, to be 

 thus instrumental in a measure in paying back in the 

 coin, I may say, in which or on account of which her 

 sons were sold in the past. Africa's children were 

 sought for and condemned to slaver}- — to play the part 

 of beasts of burden — to labour and toil in the coffee 

 plantations* of the East so as to gratify, with little or no 

 trouble or cost to the consumers, the appetites of the 

 slave-hunters and masters of plantations. By coffee 

 also, maybe, in return, the country is to be opened up. 

 Where coffee formerly flourished by means of slave 

 labour, it has almost died the death of slavery ; and to 

 some of these very parts, W'est Africa, forgiving and 

 unmindful of the past, furnishes, through the instni- 



* I omit mention of the cane fields of the West. 



I 



