COLLECTING THE NUTS
The almost universal practice amongst the natives in harvesting the nuts is to climb the tree by walking up the trunk with the aid of a loop of stout creeper. Arriving at the top at a height of sixty or eighty feet, the man deals a few vigorous blows with an axe which severs the bunch or bunches from the tree and they then fall to the ground. As the whole family usually takes part in the production of oil and in the division of labour, the man, having cut down the fruit, descends the tree, picks up his protective spear or gun, and returns home, closely followed by the wife and daughters, who transport the bunches of nuts in the wicker baskets which they have woven in their spare moments.
In every colony a similar process is adopted to separate the fruit from the parent stem. Until it is over ripe, the fruit not only adheres firmly to its stem but the porcupine thorns sometimes two inches long, make separation anything but a pleasant task. The tribes everywhere collect the clusters or bunches into heaps and cover them with plantain or banana leaves, exposing them to the sun for from three to six days, the effect of which is that the nuts, subjected to the hot rays of a tropical sun and cut off from the refreshing sustenance of the mother tree, lose their tenacious grip and readily drop away from their stem.
The methods adopted to force the oil from the fibrous pericarp differ considerably in the several political divisions of West Africa. Roughly, however, they fall into two divisions: (a) by fermentation; (b) by boiling; and in certain parts of the Kroo Coast by a combination of both methods.
The fermenting process is carried out by placing a large quantity of separated, but hard, nuts into a hole about four feet deep, this having been first lined with plantain leaves. In the regions nearer the coast towns, these pits are either paved or cemented inside and in some cases they are both paved and cemented. The nuts are covered up and then left for some weeks, even months, to ferment thoroughly. They are then either pounded in the pit with wooden pestles, or they may be taken out and treated in prepared wooden mortars.
The process of boiling is more expeditious. The nuts are boiled or steamed until the firmly coagulated fibre shows signs of yielding; then they are placed in an old canoe or large mortar and pounded with wooden pestles. In both processes, whether by fermentation or by boiling, the oily fibre separates itself from the hard inner “stone.” The fibre, which is by this time a tangled mass of yellow and brown, is then taken and squeezed, sometimes with the aid of water, through a woven press and a stream of golden liquid results. Sometimes loads of the oily fibre are thrown pell-mell into a large canoe half filled with water in which the children delight to paddle, causing the oil to rise to the surface, when the elders skim it from the top and carry it in earthenware pots for boiling and straining before sending it on its way to the market and the European consumer.
OIL AND KERNEL TRADE
The oil, however, is but one exportable product of the palm tree; the value of the inner kernel may be gathered from the fact that over four million pounds’ worth of palm kernels are sent to Europe every year. This kernel is encased in an extremely hard shell, which varies so much in size that until quite recently there was no satisfactory “stone” cracking machinery in Africa. There are now several machines on the market, but the old grey-haired lady of the West African kraal, with her primitive upper and nether grind stones, still makes by far the most reliable “cracker.”
“WALKING” UP TO GATHER FRUIT. WEAVER BIRDS’ NESTS ON THE PALM FRONDS.