cultivated in the gardens as an ornamental grass2. In Madeira
they sow the wheat from October, to January, taking it in in June ;
and it is followed by beans, or sweet potatoes (convolvulus batatas);
the latte? of which are dug up at the end of six months, if planted
after wheat, but not until after twelve, if planted with vines: the'
tops make excellent food for cattle; horses, however, will not eat
them : they are propagated by the offsets of the tendrils. The
potato is growing into favour with the natives, and has greatly
increased the population of the interior; they now cultivate it in
the European manner, but formerly planted the tops after clearing
away the tubercles; seven pounds have been found to produce
pool merchants, and from eight to ten large vessels, averaging 3 0 0 tons, are now
annually laden with palm oil in the Calebar River. The people of Calebar are now
peaceable, mannerly, and hospitable, compared to what they were in the time of the
slave trade; industry has worked off the moral virus of this traffic, and like the people
of Gaboon, whose forests of dyewood and ebony never felt the axe before the abolition,
they are much more to be believed and respected than the negroes of the Gold
Gdast settlements.” < B o w d ic h , 1. c. p. 11, 13.
* The rice from our part of the Coast of Africa, is complained of as reddish; were
it white, it would sell here in considerable quantities, at forty reis (say twopence) a
pound, when the market was fairly stocked, and at sixty when indifferently; the
present supplies being irregular. Rice is to be bought in the proper season, (October)
at Garraway’s, (in the neighbourhood of Cape Palmas) at about five pounds per ton.
I believe it is always worth thirteen pounds a ton at Sierra Leone, and I recollect to
have heard, that a cargo sent from the coast to the West Indies, arriving soon after
the hurricanes, fetched forty pounds a ton. Rice is also grown in quantities in the
interior, on the hanks of the Adiree or Volta, which is navigated 150 miles in-land,
or as far as Odentee on the confines of Dagwumba, by the salt-carriers of Adda, See
Bowdich's, two-sheet map o f Western Africa, and the , accompanying Essay, p. 15.
The establishment of a fortified market on one of the islands, about 100 miles up the
Volta, would open a new and vast source of commerce, unshackled by the brokerage
and impositions of the people, of the water-side; and lead to a direct intercourse with
the commercial kingdom of Dagwumba, the grand resort, of the caravans from Houssa,
Cassina, and Bornoo, and celebrated as an emporium, even on the banks of the
Mediterranean.
448 pounds8. Although three crops of potatoes are to be had
annually in the lower, and two in the upper parts of the island,
most of the peasantry remain obstinately attached to, and generally
cultivate (merely, as they confess, because their fathers ate it) a
species of arum, said to be the cocos of the West Indies. The leaf
answers to Persoon’s description of the arum peregrinum; it is said
never to flower here, whether the climate is not warm enough, or
whether the mode of cultivation does not favour its fructification.
It is Very abundant, and thus managed: a trench is dug and filled
with freshly-cut broom, earth is immediately strewed over it, and
in that earth is put the root, the tubercle having been taken off,
and the tops cut; the few fibres which form the root itself being
thus left to propagate it; it requires a great deal of water. The
crops are triennial on the hills (that is about 2600 feet above the
sea), but annual in the lowest parts of the island. The leaves are
so acrid that none but pigs will touch them, and the root is kept a
long time before it is cooked. The natives call it inhame, considering
it to be a yam. A slice dried in the bath of an alembic
lost more than half its weight; and on kneading it in water I
found no gluten, but a considerable portion of amidon. The
dioscorea alata is cultivated in gardens, but the d. saliva (of
Linnaeus) is indigenous; it is good eating,' but requires many
hours boiling: it only grows on the heights behind Porto Meniz,
at the north-west point of the island, and was, until lately, only
known to a few of the poorer inhabitants. Perhaps, instead of
pronouncing it indigenous, we ought to conclude that some chance
has transported it hither. Persoon refers it to India only, and
until my arrival in Africa, I cannot ascertain if it also belongs to
a Potatoes are now cultivated within the Tropics, and in the plains of Siberia; iii
Ghili, at 11,00 0 feet above the sea; and in the Environs of Quito, almost under the
Equator, at only 1150 feet. See M. D u n a l ’s excellent Monograph on the Genus
Solanum. Q 2