THE PRODUCTS OF THE OIL PALM With the date palm we have been long familiar, the cocoa-nut palm likewise, and those too which decorate our ball-rooms, galleries and banqueting halls, we greet as delightsome friends, but what is the oil palm—the Eloesis Guineensis of West Africa? It is said that five thousand years ago its sap was used by the Egyptians for the purpose of embalming the bodies of their great dead. To-day by its aid we travel thousands of miles at express rate; it has been so handled by modern science that it enters largely into our diet; the merchants in Hamburg and Liverpool make fortunes out of it; millions of coloured people live by it, and yet it is barely known to the civilized community. A fortnight’s fairly pleasant steam from Liverpool brings the traveller in sight of the high red clay coast line of Sierra Leone, and there the oil palm first greets the traveller in all its luxuriant grandeur. [Sidenote: PROPAGATING THE OIL PALM] From Freetown away down the coast as far as San Paul de Loanda, the traveller is never far from the home of the oil palm—the most valuable tree of West Africa—probably the most prolific source of human sustenance in the world. She greets the traveller everywhere as he steps ashore; she invites him to the cool shade of her avenues leading to some hospitable bungalow; she affords a shelter at intervals along the scorching dusty track—as welcome as an oasis of the desert; she waves at him vigorously from the hill-top like some fluttering banner, or gently nods her graceful plumes in the still valley; she stands as sentinel on the outskirts of the native village, or like some giant memorial column on the plain. All nature strikes the African traveller dumb with admiration, but above all in entrancing loveliness the graceful oil palm reigns supreme. To the parched and weary she is at once meat and drink and friendly shelter. Her palm cabbage and nut oil are no less palatable than her foaming fresh-drawn wine, and if no other home affords, her branches offer a temporary and not comfortless dwelling. She provides her guest with oil to lubricate his gun, with fibre to plug his boat if it springs a leak; her fronds serve as a weapon to combat the infinite torment of flies, or interlaced as a basket to carry a meal. To her the native goes for a tool or a cooking-utensil, a mat or a loin cloth, a basket or a brush, a fishing net or a rope, a torch or a musical instrument, a roof or a wall. To him she is a necessity, to the traveller a luxury, to the merchant a fortune, to the artist a subject full of charm. [Illustration: AN AVENUE OF OIL PALMS, 10 YEARS’ GROWTH.]