124 VII. SOCIAL PROBLEMS IN THE FOREST 
direction is the misfortune which comes to many of the 
best of the natives. 
Emancipation from the savage state produced by the 
accumulation of wealth plays no part here, though it 
may do so in other colonies. It is a still more dangerous 
method than that of intellectual education. 
Social problems are also produced by imports from 
Europe. Formerly the negroes practised a number of 
small industries ; they carved good household utensils 
out of wood ; they manufactured excellent cord out of 
bark fibre and similar substances ; they got salt from 
the sea. But these and other primitive industries have 
been destroyed by the goods which European trade 
has introduced into the forest. The cheap enamelled 
ware has driven out the sohd, home-made wooden 
bucket, and round every negro village there are heaps 
of such things rusting in the grass. Many minor crafts 
which they once practised are now almost forgotten ; 
it is now only the old women who know how to make 
cord out of bark, and sewing cotton out of the fibres 
of the pineapple leaves. Even the art of canoe-making 
is dying out. Thus native industries are going back- 
wards instead of forwards, just when the rise of a solid 
industrial class would be the first and surest step 
towards civihsation. 
* 
* ^ * 
One first gets a clear idea of the real meaning of the 
social danger produced by the importation of cheap 
spirits, when one reads how much rum per head of the 
population comes every year to the port towns, and 
when one has seen in the villages how the children 
drink with their elders. Here on the Ogowe officials 
