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"Knowledge never learned of schools, Of the wild bee's morning chase, Of the wild flower's time and place, Flight of fowl and habitude Of the tenants of the wood; How the tortoise bears his shell, How the woodchuck digs his cell, And the ground-mole sinks his well; How the robin feeds her young; How the oriole's nest is hung; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the ground-nut trails its vine, Where the wood-grape's clusters shine; Of the black wasp's cunning way, Mason of his walls of clay, And the architectural plans Of gray hornet artisans!"

The other chief vegetal products are wheat, barley, maize, millet, the bean, yam, sweet and common potato, tomato, eggplant, ginseng, cabbage, bamboo, indigo, pepper, tobacco, camphor, tallow, ground-nut, poppy, water-melon, sugar, cotton, hemp, and silk.

Palm and ground-nut oil enable the agents only to buy provisions; the trade is capable of infinite expansion, but it requires time as yet it supports only the two non-slaving houses, English and Dutch.

Here is a soil which, with proper cultivation, can produce rice, corn, cotton, tobacco, and indigo, and is admirably adapted to the culture of the ground-nut and sweet potato. Here are rivers and inlets abounding in fish and shell-fish. Here is a climate, often fatal to the white, but suited to the negro. Here are no harsh winters or chilling snows.

All the cultivation is carried on with hoes in the native manner, and considerable quantities of 'Holcus sorghum', maize, 'Pennisetum typhoideum', or lotsa of the Balonda, millet, rice, and wheat are raised, as also several kinds of beans one of which, called "litloo" by the Bechuanas, yields under ground, as well as the 'Arachis hypogaea', or ground-nut; with cucumbers, pumpkins, and melons.

At the end of five hours of a very tedious march we reached a stream called Wahboptah, which may be translated Ground-nut river, the savages being in the habit of digging up the Psoralea esculenta, a nutritive bulbous root which grows here. The stream was about thirty feet wide, and had some trees growing on its banks.

The largest they found just equalled the Malaga grape in size and resembled it in complexion. They called it the ground-nut, for it seemed akin to the nuts dropped by the oaks of different names. No flower that breathes on earth has been made to produce so many varieties of form, complexion, and name as this homely root.

In these days of fatted cattle and waving grain-fields this humble root, which was once the totem of an Indian tribe, is quite forgotten, or known only by its flowering vine; but let wild Nature reign here once more, and the tender and luxurious English grains will probably disappear before a myriad of foes, and without the care of man the crow may carry back even the last seed of corn to the great cornfield of the Indian's God in the southwest, whence he is said to have brought it; but the now almost exterminated ground-nut will perhaps revive and flourish in spite of frosts and wildness, prove itself indigenous, and resume its ancient importance and dignity as the diet of the hunter tribe.

The pile is short, and it clings to the seed so much that they use an iron roller to detach it. The soil, however, is equal to the production of any tropical plant or fruit. The natives have never been encouraged to cultivate cotton for sale, nor has any new variety been introduced. We saw no palm-oil-trees, the oil which is occasionally exported being from the ground-nut.

I would add, that in the meanwhile the staple exports derived from the far interior of the continent will consist of ivory, hides, and horns; whilst from the coast and its vicinity the clove, the gum copal, some textile materials drawn from the banana, aloe, and pine-apples, with oleaginous plants such as the ground-nut and cocoa-nut, are the chief exportable products.