Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 October 1900 — Gardening in Africa, [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Gardening in Africa,

The main trouble In a British West [African diet Is a lack of fresh green jfood. Bo wrote the late Mary 11. KlngsBar. the Afrlcap explorer, la Climate,

and she proceeded to mention some of the difficulties in the way pf supplying that deficiency. Gardening In West Africa is nervous work. I have worked in gardens there, and know that even lifting a kale-pot Is not there, as it Is here, a trifling act—because under the kale-pots you have there a chance of finding divers things that, If in spirits on a shelf of the British Museum reptile gallery, would give pleasure, but there, close, to oue’a ankles and not bottled and corked down, are merely exciting and unpleasant. Still, if the snakes go in the other direction, one has the satisfaction of having fresh vegetables. There are plenty of worse things than snakes connected with West African gardening. In some places there are elephants, in others hippopotami. Specimens of either in a garden for a night are incompatible with success, forajseason, at least. Then, if you hire a man to sit up all night in the garden and ring a hand-bell to keep such intruders 6ff, he keeps you awake also. If you take away the bell and set him up In business with a fire to scare game off, a leopard usually comes and takes him away, which distresses you very much. Gardening in West Africa Is not to be undertaken light-heartedly by persons of a nervous or Irritable disposition.