FORESTRY OF WEST AFRICA. 311 



mercantile houses are mainly dependent on imported 

 labour, in the person of the fine Krooboy of the 

 Liberian Republic. There one may see these men 

 in thousands. They are attached by hundreds to cer- 

 tain houses, and for a fixed tinier — ^usually two years — 

 when they are sent back to their country and replaced 

 on like terms. These men are fully employed in the 

 busy trade season, which only lasts so many months : 

 for the rest of the year they are comparatively idle, 

 whereas local and absent merchants should satisfy 

 themselves that they had the return they are entitled 

 to for the outlay consequent on the employment of so 

 many hands, and they can best do this by getting 

 grants of land for agricultural purposes, to be worked, 

 by their employees during slack seasons, in cereals 

 and other products of economic value. 



View the maintenance alone of sUch numbers, which 

 has to be provided for by the employers. Whether 

 it be in yams, plantains^ rice, or kouskous, the product 

 should and can be the result of an exertion put forth 

 and insisted upon, as I have brought to notice. 

 Acknowledge also the value of such employment as 

 additional lessons for the inculcating of increased 

 energy and instruction. Natives are said to be idle 

 and lazy: then teach them and rear them up as I 

 have suggested. We too have had our idle and 

 nomadic and untutored age. 



Next, economic plants of commercial value else- 

 where should be introduced :. fields would be thus 



P 2 



