kernel, for they are as common as the pebbles of stony land,
especially in this section of the country, where we have palm
orchards of spontaneous growth for miles together, and interspersing
the surrounding country in almost innumerable numbers.

According to statistical ascertainment, there is on an average
exported from this port, thirty thousand gallons of palm oil
annually, from which fact we ascertain demonstratively that the palm
kernels which are thrown away here (leaving out the whole leeward
coast of our possessions) are sufficient to make thirty thousand
gallons of oil, more or less. This is not at all a problematical
speculation of ours, but we feel authorised to advance this
assertion from the fact that one bushel of kernels, completely
worked up, will make two gallons of oil. But to work them up is the
thing, plentiful as they are; we however, hesitate not to say, that
it can be done and probably will be.

Having now so far conquered the difficulties attending the
manufacture of this oil, as that we can safely vouch a reasonable
supply for home consumption, we most cheerfully recommend it to the
citizens of this Republic, whose demands for it, for eating
purposes, we doubt not can be supplied, and on very reasonable
terms.

We will assure our customers that there will not be an ounce of dirt
or sediment in a hundred pounds of our oil.

The recent abolition of the soap duty, by stimulating the demand for
palm oil, will have an instant effect on the trade and commerce of
Western Africa, by confirming the suppression of the slave trade, and
giving an additional impetus to negro improvement. It will also
increase the production for England of ground nuts, whence the oil so
largely used in making continental soaps is expressed. "When (observes
a recent writer) the Portuguese first treated with that coast, they
found palm oil and ground nuts articles of native food, and so they
remained down to a period within living memory. So used, they neither
required any cultivation nor gave rise to any notions of property.
Though whole tracts of country are crowded by the oil-palm tree,
little care was taken of what was, in fact, superabundant; and as for
ground nuts, they were simply dug up as prudence or necessity
dictated. Some thirty years ago a cask or two of palm oil was sent
home from the Gold Coast; it met so ready a sale t