THE AFRICAN OIL PALM. 



245 



The African Oil Palm (Elms guineensis, Lin.) is, after tlie cocoa- 

 nut palm, one of the most important in a commercial point of view, 

 since it furnishes to British commerce about 60,000 tons of oil 

 annually, of the value of one and a half to one and three-quarters of a 

 million sterling, besides the quantity locally consumed as food in 

 Africa, and sent to other countries. It is distinguished by its 

 decumbent trunk, and bears clusters of one-seeded fruits (drupes), 

 with oily husks of a bright vermilion or a more or less yellow colour. 

 The range of this palm is not as yet well defined, but aj)pears to 

 extend from the coast of Guinea to the south of Fernando Po, and 

 grows as far up in the interior as Zheru, a distance of 400 miles from 

 the sea, or the mouth of the Min, one of the embouchures of the Niger. 



Captain Burton, in his ' Lake Regions of Central Africa,' states that 

 this palm is known by the Arabs to grow in the islands of Zanzibar 

 and Pemba, and more rarely in the mountains of Usagona. It springs 

 up apparently uncultivated in large dark groves on the shores of the 

 Tanganyika, where it hugs the margin, rarely growing at any distance 

 inland. This fine palm, he adds, is also tapped, as the date palm is 

 in Western India, for toddy, and the cheapness of this timbo — the 

 sura of Western Africa — accounts for the prevalence of intoxication, 

 and the consequent demoralization of the Lake tribes. 



The principal ports in the Bight of Benin from which palm oil is 

 exported are, Badagry, Porto Novo, Whydah, Aliquah, Lagos, and 

 Palmas. 



Palm oil is exported from the following rivers : Brass, New Cala- 

 bar, Bonny, Old Calabar, Bemba, Cameroons, and also from Fernando 

 Po. Independent of these, in the rivers Malunba, Boreah, and Kampo 

 palm oil is brought by coasting vessels. Bonny supplies the largest 

 amount of palm oil that is brought from any river in West Africa. 



The process of extracting the oil is simple. The clusters or 

 branches of fruit, which contain perhaps as many as 4000, are gathered 

 by the men, and thrown indiscriminately into a trench or pit, and so 

 left until they become somewhat decayed. The fruit is afterwards 

 pounded in a mortar to loosen the husky fibre covering the nut. This 

 done, they are placed in large clay vats filled with water, and two or 

 three women tread out the semi-liquid oil, which comes to the surface 

 as disengaged from the fibre, when it is collected and boiled to get rid 

 of the water. The inner surface of these clay vats having at first 

 absorbed a small quantity of oil, is not afterwards affected either by 

 the water or oil. The oil is collected in pots, containing from three 

 to twenty gallons. 



M. Boussingalt has shown, from information collected,* that the 

 average production of oil from palms is at the rate of 900 kilos, per 

 hectare, that is to say, superior by a third to the production of oil 

 from the olive in the south of Europe. 



This vegetable fat is stated by A. C. Oudemans, jun., to have 

 the following remarkable composition : stearin, palmitin, myristin, 

 laurein, elain, caprin, caproin, and caprylin. It is used with the other 

 solid fats for making soap and candles, and for railway grease. The 

 price of the oil at the close of 1876 was 41Z. per ton. The enormous 

 * ' Economie Rurale,' t. i. p. 350. 



