The transport of cocoa is chiefly in the hands of alien labour, and should the flow of this labour cease from any cause whatever, the cocoa industry would suffer a check from which it would take years to recover. The coastal regions are fairly secure, for most of the districts within twenty miles of the coast are reached by a daily service of motor lorries under the management of the European cocoa-buying firms. Many of the native farmers within thirty miles of Accra, however, with true African trading instinct prefer selling their cocoa at a higher price at the port of embarkation, and so have created the interesting system of “barrel rolling.” In the season these strongly bound and ponderous casks are purchased from the European stores, filled with cocoa, and rolled to the sea-shore. Travelling along the somewhat primitive Gold Coast roads one meets at frequent intervals perspiring natives struggling with the barrels which, filled with cocoa, weigh considerably over half-a-ton. They may be “holding on” to a barrel racing down a steep incline, or three of them straining their utmost to force the ponderous weight up a steep hill. Occasionally they come to grief, for we saw more than one cask which had fallen over a cliff into a deep gorge below. Generally speaking, three men will undertake to roll two barrels to the coast, the three concentrating their efforts upon a single barrel going uphill, while on the level road or down hill they control the two barrels between them. We met three such men who had rolled two casks for twenty-five to thirty miles, a task of two days, for which they receive 20_s._ per cask. [Sidenote: TRANSPORT DIFFICULTIES] The problem which faces administrator, merchant and native producer is that of transport. This threatens to become acute, for we were informed by a merchant who recently journeyed beyond Kumasi that large consignments of cocoa were lost owing to the lack of transport facilities. At the same time, given a fair price for cocoa in the home market, just treatment for transport labourers, the extension of roads and light railways, there is no reason why a single ton of cocoa should fail to reach the coast. In the Gold Coast colony the white man occupies his normal position in the tropics—the connecting link or middle-man between the European manufacturer and the native producer. The Government very wisely endeavours to keep the industry in the hands of the native farmers and assists them by sending lecturers through the colony, whose duty it is to advise the farmers upon pruning, fermentation, drying, the danger of pests, and the general principles of modern agricultural science. With inherent instinct, the British Government recognizes that the real asset of the colony is the indigenous inhabitant, whose material and moral progress is not only the first, but the truest interest of the State.