COMMERCE. 281 dreams of replanting trees, a provision considered a work of supererogation, and left entirely to nature.

If the export of gum and ivory to Europe should ever become a free-trade, merely subjected to duty, these two articles will yield a very considerable profit to those who may have the good fortune to benefit first by this alteration, and who take the trouble to repair to the spot. The gathering takes place, as I have before-mentioned, at the close of the rainv season, in the months of November, Decernber, and January ; the gum obtained is of the finest quality, and is erroneously named gum Arabic.

Kordofan yields, in average years, from three thousand five hundred to four thousand loads of this product, or from ten to fourteen thousand hundredweight, at forty-four oock'ckahs. I have been assured by many persons that an addition of six thousand hundred-weight might be made to this quantity, if the labour of the persons employed in the collection were but better remunerated. Before the introduction of the monopoly, it was sold in the following manner, a plan which will be again pursued as soon as the present statutes are repealed. A number of men, women, and children, gather the raw gum in the forest into baskets, capable of containing twelve rottoli (the rottolo about three quarters of a pound). Forty of these baskets constitute a camel-load, which weighs four hundred and eighty rottoli, and reckoning the tare of the cases at five