produce sweetness. Gypsum is pretty generally used to clarify
and mellow the wines while working, unless they happen to be ef
a green vintage. The importation of foreign brandy is now
prohibited, and even that made in Portugal is subjected to a duty,
amounting to a prohibition; it is made from the north wine, and
the lees of others. In the war time, all the houses were compelled
to ripen their wines by stoves, as they held no stocks: those who
managed this themselves, rose the heat gradually, from about 60°
to 90°; others who trusted them to the public stoves, generally
found, that they were neglected until the last moment, and then
all but boiled".
The wheat grown in Madeira, scarcely amounts to £ of the quantity
annually consumed. Near the sea the lands yield annual crops 1
The maximum of the proportion is fifteen to one, but the average
five to one. The sea mays is so easily procured from the neighbouring
continents and islands, that no one has thought it worth
the trouble of planting for any other purpose than to look a t; but
it would succeed extremely welly, I was assured at Lisbon, that
« 22,314 pipes of wine (of which lOl^vent to the bishop) were made in Madeira,
in -1 87173,6-04 English bushels of wheat, 11,616 of rye, and 12,768 of barley, were
produced in 1813. The Portuguese endeavoured to grow wheat in St. Thomas’s in
the sixteenth century, trying all the different localities and seasons successively, hut
it never ripened, or produced full ears. CoUeg&o de Notieias,p. 101. Cadamosto
writes in 1445, that Madeira produced 3Q,000 Venetian stajas of wheat annually,
(equal to about 1966 P. bushels of 675 cubic inches each) adding, that the soil had
at first produced sixty for one, but then only forty and thirty for one, and that it daily
deteriorated. In the higher and northern parts of the island, they get but one crop
of wheat every seven years, allowing the broom to grow uncontrolled for six, and
then burning it on the ground as manure, Wring no other.
» The variety most esteemed in Madeira, is the ‘ white-round,’ imported from the
Cape Verde Islands a n d New York, which will always fetch twenty pence a bushel
more than the * yellow-flat,’ which isgrown on the coast of Africa, and in the Azores.
The ‘yellow-round’ (imported from Philadelphia, the Azores, Genoa, and other parts
the sea mays is sown in the provinces immediately after the wheat
harvest in June, and is ready for taking in m October ; the same
land thus yielding a crop of each in the same year. Rice is merely
.of the Mediterranean,) is considered the second best variety, and the ‘ white-flat’
(from the Azores and America,) the third; and even this will fetch sixpence a
bushel more than the yellow-flat. In the Canaries the yellow-round is preferred. The
exporter may get six and a half bits the alquiem (six shillings and fivepence the
English bushel according to the present rate of exchange) fpr the white-round, t
am thus particular, in the hope of inducing the cultivation of the more profitable
variety™ the Gold Coast. ® Before Mr. Hope Smith’s government,' the natives of
the Gold Coast scarcely grew corn enough for their own consumption; fammes
sometimes resulted from the Ashantee invasions, but as often from their own indolence
never from the unkindness of nature, who has, perhaps, been too prodigal of
her bounties for the rapid increase of African industry. The natives were persuaded
and excited to grow corn largely in the neighbourhood of Succondee and Accra, and
within the last two years, I am positively informed, by a commercial resident at leas
fourteen vessels have been laden exclusively with com, for Madeira and the West
Indies. Several cargoes had been exported during the short period of Mr. Hope
Smith’s government which preceded my departure from Africa. Bowdich on the
British and French Expeditions to Teembo, with R e m a r k s on Ctvihzanm tn Afnca,
&c p. 12. In Fantee, a puncheon of com (equal to two chests) well heaped up, (so
as to give nearly a bushel in excess) costs the shipper an India Romal, worth twelve
shillings in England, or about twelve shillings and sixpence to the importer in Africa.
At Accra, it is to be purchased still cheaper. It must be understood, however, that
that is the price during the three or four months after the harvest, (in August,) when
it gradually becomes dearer. It is not considered hard enough for shipment before
October. In the time of the slave trade, the Governor of Annamaboe Fort was
obliged to send to Succondee (nearly fifty miles off) for palm oil to light the lamps :
the last Governor collected and shipped upwards of 1200 puncheons in twelve months.
B has been found very advantageous to export it into Brazil, for the sake o the
negroes alone, who cook almost every thing in it, and axe as passionately attached
it fs their countrymen in Africa. “ A great deal has been said of the improbability
of getting any thing but gold and ivory as a return from Afnca. I submit twofacts
in reply The palm oil trade at Calebar did not exist in the time of the slave trade,
it was created and necessitated by the abolition. It was felt to be very laborious by
the natives at first, in comparison with the indolence of the slave trade; but no easier
commerce could be devised, for it was the only natural product which immediately
stared them in the face. This trade grew under the care of a few persevering Inver