UNTAPPED CATTLE LANDS.

Franklin Times, 3 January 1923, Page 5

UNTAPPED CATTLE LANDS.

(By E. Creighton Duff). When you steam round the great western shoulder of Africa, the, only glimpse you get of land is a low, dingy coast, with a creamy fringe of, breakers flickering on a narrow rim of,silver sands. Farther back is forest, swamp and forest, gloomy and menacing. One by one the steamy ports of call are peached and left behind, and you slide on over the oily spa ever farther east to Old Calabar, where the mangrove swamps send out their sullen challenge to the indifferent sea, and year by year wrest further ground to add to Mother Africa. Then you creep a little way down her flank, and you view the desolation of the River of the King, which > the Spanish adventurers of old must have named in some biting irony on the Castilian princes of! the day. Then wc came, centuries after, and looked anti left. Later the Germans took of qur leavings, and made of them their once great colony of the Cameroons. An hour or two more and you get glimpses o“f the volcanic peak of the great Cameroon Mountain. And as you get nearer, you may, if you are very lucky, sight a fringe of fugiitve snowon the topmost heights. The intolerable mass of rock and forest presses down to the very water’s edge and weighs ,on your heart, but the sky and the sea are a glorious blue, and the surf breaks no\V like milk on the jetblack volcanic sands as you anchor far out in the plqasant bay of Victoria. On one side of your ship lies the Island of Lepers, whence the miserable few who live there continually itry <jtp escape to the mainland. Farther in shore is the old German beer-garden island, where thirsty Teutons were wont to quaf? lager and drink to “The Day.”

This is the port of what is now the British Cameroons, and forms the outlet, of the great cattle country of the interior. A more unpromising outlook for cattle would be hard to choose. A dense and splendid tropical forest (we are well-nigh on the equator here) stretches almost unbroken for one-hundred and fifty ffiiles’ to the steep escarpment of the tablelands. In the rains this road is cut ’ every few miles by !deep and dangerous rivers, for the most, part unbridged, save for precarious Ijana-made rope-ways, swinging, softly like cobwebs of overnight across the boiling flood underneath, which sucks and eddies as it sweeps past. But in the dry weather there i$ no hindrance to man or beast, and the succulent herbage in every clearing affords unsurpassed pasturage on the way. ‘' q't/ iY■ l -' : ; The tablelands themselves arc some sixty miles in breadth; the country is (open grass, excellently watered, with a mean elevation of over three thousancUfeetV rising to more than six and Yin some placestY «/The population is Scanty, and largV tracts of' ideal Ranching land are available to settlers. But! it is nob here that the cattle are bred; One must' cross the tableland dnd march another hundred miles north to: where the- innumerable herds df the interior breed in their millions. So cheap are the cattle that they can pe purchased at under three pounds apiece on the grass uplands, only ten ejasy days’ march from the sea. But by purchasing them at the breedinggrounds themselves, the price falls to a few shillings. (It would be rash to make any estimates of ; the numbers that could be obtained, but were an assured market to exist at the port, the herds would come down in their hundreds of thousands. This route to the seq' is the shortest and safest that exists in West Africa to the cattlelands of the The‘fly’ belts are few and far between. There is excellent pasturage all the way, and half-way between breeding grounds and port lie those delectable grass uplands,' which -might easily support vast herds of their own.

Farther west, in Nigeria, the cattle lands arc separated from the sea by several hundred; miles, with dangerous fly-belts and great rivers to cross. True, there is a. railway; blit, freights are protfibitive, and it could only deal with a tiny fraction of the stock. To finance a scheme of the kind indicated would require large capital, if done on the great scale heeded—if the Cameroons are to b<jl treated as a serious source of supply of meat (live or chilled) for Europe. But; for the hold and adventurous spirits, with only a thousand or two of capital, a lucrative trade could at once be established with the great coast ports, with their teeming, meatless population. Headquarters \yould, of course, be on the 1 uplands, from the foot of which runs a narrow-gauge railway to Duala, the splendid French port, which is only a few hours from Victoria. There, on the l'resh, healthy highlands, one might settle with one’s family; all European fruits, vegetables, wheat, barley, grow well, Sport, including the African buffalo and ele-phant—-elephants are everywhere—is most excellent in parts of the uplands.

Hdrses are cheap—Yen to twenty pounds-—and keep in wonderful conditiom- Labour is cheap (sixpence a day), and abundant enough for all settlers’ needs. Mails from Europe afe weekly, and now take under 20 days to reach Victoria; while telegraph lines connect the two centres of the uplailds .direct with the outside wbrld. ‘ltis a great and wonderful country, gaping for' development, 1 as wide as the maw of Europe gapes for its meat. : ■ ■'' ' , ;i ?.