The vegetable articles of export are of great value. Cotton may be produced in unlimited abundance. The African dye-stuffs are already recognized as extensive and valuable articles of commerce. Indigo is used extensively by the natives. When we recollect that the vast trade of Bengal in this article has been created within the memory of men still living, and that India possesses no natural advantages beyond those of Africa, we may infer what a profusion of wealth might be poured rapidly over Africa by peace and good government. Gums, of various kinds, constitute a branch of trade which may be considered as only commencing. The extensive employment of india-rubber, and the knowledge of gutta-percha, are only a few years old. Africa gives promise of a large supply of such articles. Its caoutchouc has already been introduced into the arts.[2] It may be long before the natural sources of supply found in its marshy forests can be exhausted. Be that as it may; when men are induced, as perhaps they soon will be, to substitute regular cultivation for the wild and more irregular modes of procuring articles which are becoming every day of more essential importance, Africa may take a great share in the means adopted to supply them. Palm-oil has become pre-eminently an object of attention. The modes of procuring it are very rude and wasteful. The palm-nuts are generally left for a day or two, heaped together in a hole dug in the ground. They are then trodden by the women, till they form a greasy pulp; out of this the oil is rudely strained through their fingers, or water is run into the hole to float the oil, and it is skimmed off with their hands into a calabash. In Benin they employ the better mode of boiling it off. The oil occurs in a kind of pulp surrounding the seed, as is the case with the eatable part of the common date; it is evident, therefore, that more suitable modes of producing it may be put in practice.