Note D.
The following list of African articles, as exhibited to Mr. Pitt and the House of Lords, by Mr. Clarkson, will illustrate the ingenuity of the Africans, and the possibility of making its natural productions a branch of lucrative and legitimate commerce. These articles were contained in a box, formed of four divisions; the first of which was filled with specimens of woods, polished; amongst them, mahogany of five different sorts, tulip and satin-wood, cam and bar-wood, fustic, black and yellow ebony, palm-tree, mangrove, calabash, and date; and also seven species retaining their native names, viz. tumiah, sarnaim, and jimlalié, each of a beautiful yellow; acajou, a deep crimson; bask and quellé for cabinet work; and bentin, the wood of which is used for the native canoes. Various other woods, one of which was a fine purple; and from two others a strong yellow and deep orange, and also a flesh-colour, could be extracted. The second division included ivory; and four species of pepper, the long, the black, the Cayenne, and the Malaguetta: three species of gum, Senegal, copal, and ruber astringes; cinnamon, rice, tobacco, indigo, white and Nankin cotton, Guinea-corn, and millet; three species of beans, of which two were for food, and the other yielding an orange dye: two species of tamarinds, one for food, the other to give whiteness to the teeth: pulse, seeds, and fruits of various sorts; some of the latter of which, Dr. Sparrman had pronounced, from a trial made during his residence in Africa, to be peculiarly valuable as drugs.
The third division contained an African loom, with a spindle and spun cotton round it; cloths of cotton of various kinds, made by the natives, some white, others dyed, and others, in which they had interwoven European silk; cloths and bags of grass, fancifully coloured; ornaments of the same material; ropes made from a species of aloes, and others, remarkably strong, from grass and straw; fine string made of the fibres of the roots of trees: soap of two kinds, one of which was formed from an earthy substance: pipe bowls made of a clay of a brown red, one beautifully ornamented with black devices, burnt in and highly glazed; another from Galám, made of an earth which was richly impregnated with little particles of gold. Trinkets made by the natives from their own gold; knives and daggers formed from bar iron; and various other articles, such as bags, dagger-sheaths, quivers, gris gris, all of leather, of native manufacture, dyed of various colours, and ingeniously sewed together. The fourth division contained the instruments of confinement used on board a slave-ship, to which were added those of punishment used in the colonies; such as iron collars, manacles, scourges, &c.