CHAPTER VII

INDIGENOUS  PRODUCTS—THE OIL PALM

The whole of the Sherbro and its Hinterland is enor¬
mously rich in indigenous productions ; but the oil palm,
both in quantity and value, far exceeds everything else.
The tree is met throughout the country in large quantities ;
but in some places it forms great forests that are practically
inexhaustible. In fact it would be impossible to exag¬
gerate the number of oil palms in the country. I have
been through places where nothing grew or would grow
except these trees. They appear to me to be able to
thrive anywhere. I have seen them flourishing in a
sandy soil near the sea as luxuriantly as in the more
fertile districts of the interior. Both of the forests shown
in Figures i6 and 17 are situated within a mile of the
Atlantic, one on the Turner Peninsula and the other at
Sulima.

The fruit of this tree is the great palm cone. The
centre cone in the illustration (Figure 15) weighed 17I lbs.
The nuts are thickly set in a spiky casing on the exterior,
and from this particular cone no less than 784 nuts
were obtained. A tree will produce up to eight or nine
of these cones.