reason. Damp heat demands almost as much carbon as damp or dry
cold.

Return we to the Baraka Mission. The name is a corruption of
"barracoon;" in the palmy days of the trade slave-pens occupied
the ground now covered by the chapel, the schoolroom, and the
dwelling-house, and extended over the site of the factory to the
river-bank. The place is well chosen. Immediately beyond the
shore the land swells up to a little rounded hill, clean and
grassy like that about Sanga-Tanga. The soil appears poor, and
yet around the mission-house there are some fine wild figs, one a
huge tree, although not a score of years old; the bamboo clump is
magnificent, and the cocoas, oranges, and mangoes are surrounded
by thick, fragrant, and luxuriant quickset hedges of well-trimmed
lime.

A few words concerning the banana of this coast, which we find so
flourishing at Baraka. An immense god-send to the Gaboon, it is
well known to be the most productive of all food, 100 square
yards of it giving annually nearly 2,000 kilogrammes of food far
more nutritious than the potato. Here it is the musa sapientum,
the banana de Soa Thome, which has crossed over to the Brazil,
and which is there known by its sharper leaves and fruit, softer
and shorter than the indigenous growth. The plant everywhere is
most vigorous in constant moist heat, the atmosphere of a
conservatory, and the ground must be low and wet, but not swampy.
The best way of planting the sprouts is so to dispose them that
four may form the corners of a square measuring twelve feet each
side; the common style is some five feet apart. The raceme, which
appears about the sixth to the tenth month, will take sixty days