The native method of making farms does not, indeed, do so much harm in well-watered, densely-populated regions like those of Sierra Leone or the Niger Delta; but it does do an immense amount of harm in regions that are densely populated and require to make extensive farms, more particularly in the regions of Lagos and the Gold Coast, where the fertile belt is only a narrow ribbon, edged on the one side by the sand sea of the Sahara, and on the other by the salt sea of the South Atlantic. You can see the result of it in the district round Accra, which has always been heavily populated; for hundreds of years the forest has been kept down by agricultural enterprise. Consequences are, the rainfall is now diminished to a point that threatens to extinguish agriculture, at any rate, a sufficient agriculture to support the local population; and it is not too much to say you can read on the face of the Accra plain famines to come. There is little reason to doubt that both the African deserts, the Sahara and the Kalahari, are advancing towards the Equator. Round Loanda you come across a sand-logged region of some fifty square miles, where you get the gum shed by forests that have gone, humanly speaking, never to return; human agency is largely responsible, it is like sawing the branch of a tree partially through, and then the wind breaks it off. Forest destruction in lands adjacent to deserts is the same thing; the forest is destroyed to a certain extent, an extent that diminishes the rainfall and makes it unable to resist the desert winds, and then--finis.
In the regions of the double rains in the great forest belt of Africa things are different, so you cannot generalise for West Africa at large in this matter. It is one thing for forest destruction to go on in the Gold Coast, quite another for it to go on in Calabar or Congo Français, where men fight back the forest as Dutchmen fight the sea.
But I apologise. This, you will say, is not connected with Governmental expenditure, &c.; but it is to me a more amusing subject, and indirectly has a bearing; for example, Government expenditure in the direction of instituting a Forestry Department would be right enough in some regions, but unnecessary in others.