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The same apathy to agriculture prevails in Liberia. For the last forty
years large plantations have been laid out on the noble St. Paul River
between Cape Mount and Mount Mesurado. The coffee-shrub, like the
copal-tree, belts Africa from east to west--from Harar, where I saw it,
through Karague, where it grows wild, the bean not being larger than a
pin's head, to Manywema, in the Congo valley, and to the West Coast,
especially about the Rio Nunez, north of Sierra Leone. It is of the finest
quality, second only to the Mocha; but what hope is there of its
development? The Vay tribe, which holds the land, is useless; the rare new
comers from America will work, but the older settlers will not; and there
is hardly money enough to pay Krumen.
On the Gold Coast there is no exceptional scarcity of population: under
normal circumstances, the labour-market is sufficiently supplied, but a
strain soon exhausts it. Sir Garnet Wolseley found his greatest difficulty
in the want of workmen: he was obliged to apply for 500 British navvies;
and, at one time, he thought of converting the first and second West India
Regiments, with Wood's and Russell's men, into carriers.
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