6777. _Chairman._] You mean by legitimate commerce, the exchange of manufactures for produce?--Exactly; and I stated that there was no legitimate commerce, because there was no produce whatever. Might I be allowed to refer to a question and answer that I understand has been put referring to the Gallinas. I have been informed that this question was put to Mr. Peters: “You do not think Captain Denman’s observations upon the subject practically of any value.” Now I beg to observe that Mr. Peters can never have seen my observations upon the subject. The answer of Mr. Peters is, that I thought I had put an effectual stop to the slave trade in the Gallinas, and that many others thought so. 6778. Mr. _Forster_.] In a letter to the Governor of Sierra Leone, dated the 12th of December, you say that the people at the Gallinas “have already, in a wild state, but of the finest quality, cotton, indigo, pepper, and palm nut, the sugar cane and tobacco, which they are enabled to cure. Salt is procured in considerable quantities, and there is no doubt that coffee would flourish as well as at Sierra Leone and Monrovia.” Do you wish the Committee to understand that if a trader from Sierra Leone were to go there with goods, he could obtain in exchange for them any of those articles you have enumerated?--With regard to the tobacco there is a misprint; instead of “enabled to cure” it should be “unable to cure.” I have stated in the same letter that no cultivation whatever did exist, and that I used every effort to persuade the chiefs to cultivate the soil. My information was derived from the chiefs as to the existence of these articles. 6779. _Chairman._] Do cotton, indigo, pepper, palm nut, the sugar cane, and tobacco, grow there in a wild state, and are they of good quality?--It is a fact that I derived from the unanimous declaration of the chiefs of the country. 6780. Mr. _Aldam_.] Are there any means of carrying on any considerable commerce at the present moment?--Certainly not. It must begin upon a small scale, as elsewhere; it does not spring at once into a considerable commerce.