794 
THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST [May 1, 1901. 
has been sold for as much as £114 per ton. One 
of the difficulties planters have to contend with 
in this part of the world is the impossibility of 
borrowing money locally. Want of capital and 
lack of credit would prove fatal 'to most of them, 
if they met with two successive unproductive 
years. Fortunately for them, no leaf disease has 
yet made its appearance among Nyassa colfea, 
but there is an insect — a kind of bug, of the 
ladybird species — which causes spotted berries. If, 
however, they are collected in time, no great 
damage is done to the coffee. Early rains are 
the best for the plants, which require altogether 
about fifty inches of rain. Another difficulty 
planters have to meet is that of finding suitable 
EUROPEAN ASSISTANTS. 
Many of the young men who are sent out here 
are unsuited to their work. To be really useful 
an assistant should possess a good deal of practi- 
cal knowledj;e ; he should be able to show natives 
how to make and burn bricks, understand some- 
thing of carpentering, and have had some experi- 
ence in the management of animals. Young men 
having had some practical training on a farm are 
usually the most useful. It is true that they gene- 
rally lack the knowledge of bookkeeping, which is 
one of the duties they have to perform. Assistants 
on plantations receive from £150 to £2U0 a 
year, with a house. Fifty pounds are suffi- 
cient to cover all their expenses. But their 
life is not a pleasant one. They are most of the 
time alone, and even supposing that they should 
have a neighbour within ten to twelve miles, their 
only means of conveyance is by machilla, a ham- 
mock carried by natires, a slow and disagreeable 
mode of locomotion. Horses are most expensive 
and difficult to get, £40 being the average price 
paid for a horse. Natives do not understand them, 
and there is the risk of their dying of the dreaded 
horse sickness, besides the impossibility of tak- 
ing them to any district where tsetse fly is 
found. 
In addition to coffee some planters grow 
TOBACCO, 
bub no serious attempt has been made in this direc- 
tion. The tobacco grown here is of inferior quality 
and badly cured. I am sure that, if good plants 
were imported from Cuba, Manila, Syria and other 
tobacco-producing centres, excellent results would 
be obtained. Experts would have, it is true, to be 
brought out to train the natives in the various 
operations of this industry. When I visited Nyas- 
saland seven years ago Messrs. Buchanan Bros, 
had begun experimenting'on these lines and I bought 
from them splendid yellow tobacco which made 
cigarettes equal to many of those sold in Egypt. 
They also turned out cigars as good as any Indian 
cheroots, but after Mr. Buchanan's death all the 
machinery was sold and the culture abandoned. 
At present the tobacco produced is somewhat like 
the Boer variety of South Africa, and of so inferior 
a quality that it would hardly find a purchaser at 
the London Docks. 
CHILLIES 
are erown in small quantities with splendid results, 
but no attention is given to their cultivation, as it 
is feared that large production would bring the 
prices down. Tea grows well in some parts of the 
Jfrotectorate, but the |)rocess of curing is unknown 
here. Cinchona has also given satisfactory results, 
and ramie fibre ought tojprove remunerative, since 
suitable machinery for its treatment has been in- 
vented by Mr. Foa, of Limoges. 
There is one thing planters urgently claim, and 
which I have long advocated as well for Rhodesia 
as for Nyassaland. This is the creation of a 
PUBLIC LABORATORY, 
to which would be attached a public analyst and an 
experimental farm. On such a farm experiments 
would be carried out in all the different cultures 
under an able specialist, planters being able to 
send manures and soils to be analysed, and coffee 
to be tested and valued. They should be able to 
send tiieir assistants or to go themselves to be 
taught tne cultivation and curing of coffee, 
tobacco, tea, and other products likp]y to suit the 
country. From this institution planteis should 
be able to get an expert to examine their estate, 
to advise them as to the most suitable methods of 
improving them, and, from time to time, the 
superintendent of this institution could publish in 
the Government Gazette any information likely 
to prove of use to the planters. To open such an 
establishment would mean an original outlay not 
exceeding five to six hundred pounds and to keep 
it going would cose less than £1,000 per annum. 
The greater portion of this expenditure would be 
covered by the fees paid l)y the planters, and 1 
am sure that none of them would object to paying 
six pence per ton on the coffee exported from 
their estates, if tlie money were used to cover the 
cost of maintenance. In addition to the jdanta- 
tioos, the most important trade of British 
Central Africa is india-rubber, a trade which hps 
taken an extraordinary extension within the last 
few years. While in 1897 the exports of india- 
rubber amounted to £1,000 only, they had reached 
£10,000 in 1898. Most of it comes Irom the west 
coast of Lake Nyassa, but unfortunately, the 
natives gather it in so careless a fashion that un- 
less proper supervision is exercised by the 
authorities all the plants will soon be destroyed. 
I am told that steps have already been taken to 
avoid such a result. I will now try to sum up in 
a few words 
THE PROGRESS WHICH HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED 
Since I came here in 1893. Magnificent roads have 
been built, the most absolute security has been 
assured throughout the Protectorate, a recular 
administration has been established in the remot- 
est districts, where justice is rendered exclusively 
by Europeans, slavery has been completely wiped 
out, the facilities of communication have increased 
in a remarkable way, and their cost has consider- 
ably decreased. OofFee-planting has passed from 
the experimental to the practical stage, and tlie 
cost has been greatly reduced. Last, but not 
least, the whole Protectorate has been put in 
direct telegraphic communication with the Cape 
and Europe, a result entirely due to Mr Khodes, 
without the cost of a single penny to the British 
Central Africa Administration. I hare absolute 
faith in the future of the country, and I do not 
share the views expressed by many people as to 
the precarious state of the coffee industry. The 
railway from Lake Nyassa to the coast, a thing of 
the near future, will give a fresh impulse to coffee- 
planting, and reduce the cost of transport ; and if 
it causes a small exodus of local labour this will 
be fully compensated by the increase of facilities 
it will give the natives to come and work on the 
plantations. It will also relieve tlae strain now 
existing on the local resources of labour, so much 
of which is absorbed by the transport of goods to 
