Gold dust, and trinkets of pure Wangara gold, of various fashions, of the manufacture of Housa and Jinnie.--B'Kore Sudan (fumigation of Sudan), a kind of frankincense highly esteemed by the Africans. Ostrich feathers (the finest in the world). Elephants' Teeth. Korkidan, so called by the Arabs, being the horns of the rhinoceros: these are a very costly article, and are in high estimation among the muselmen, for sword-hilts and dagger-handles. Guza Sarawie (Grains of Paradise). Gum Copal Assafoetida, and a great variety of drugs for manufacturing uses, and various roots for dyeing. Ebony. Camwood. Sandal wood. Indigo, equal to that of Guatimala: to which may be added, the command of the gum trade of Senegal.
All the foregoing merchandise being first landed at Alexandria, Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and Tetuan, and other Barbary ports in the Mediterranean, as well as at Mogodor on the western coast of Africa, are afterwards sold to the Muhamedan merchants, who sell them with a very good profit to other Moors. These goods frequently go through three, four, and five hands, before they reach the consumer in Sudan, subject to a profit gained by each holder of from twenty to thirty per cent.; the last purchaser, who conveys them through the Desert, however, expects, and generally obtains, from fifty to sixty per cent. profit on them, to which he considers himself entitled, from the fatigue and privations of his passage through the Desert, during a journey through a country, for the most part barren, of above fifteen hundred miles in length; through various kingdoms and principalities, subject to a charge for (statta) convoy at the exit and entrance of each respective state or district on each side of the Sahara, as well as in the Sahara itself.
But, according to the plan here suggested to the commercial community, all these various articles, instead of passing through five several hands, would now pass through only two hands, viz. through those of the shippers in England, and those of their agents established on the western coast of Africa, who would sell them directly to the Timbuctoo trader, which latter, instead of having several principalities and kingdoms to pass through (at the exit from each of which, as well as at the entrance of them, he would have a charge for protection or convoy, called statta, levied on the goods), would have no convoy-charge, or statta, to pay; he would have but ten hundred, instead of fifteen or sixteen hundred miles to go, being about two-thirds of the distance of the road from Tunis or Tripoli, through Fezzan, to Timbuctoo.
N.B. There is an immense bank near the contemplated depôt, or port (abounding in fish, which now supplies the wahs, or cultivated spots in the desert, as well as the territories on the southern confines thereof), which produces fish sufficient to supply the whole of the interior of Africa, as well as the shores of the Mediterranean, &c. &c.
Letter from Vasco de Gama, in elucidation of
this Plan.
Sir,
The Society of Encouragement for National Industry in France, has granted prizes for various discoveries in the arts and sciences; but I wish government, or some society of our own country, would offer a liberal prize for the best mode of colonising Africa, and for meliorating the condition of the inhabitants of that vast and little known continent. A well-digested plan for the discovery of this continent might be followed by the most desirable events. The efforts of the African Association have, to say the least, been lamentably disastrous; little good can be anticipated from the efforts of solitary or scientific travellers in a country where science is not cultivated, and where the travellers know little or nothing of the [173] general language of Africa, or of the manners and dispositions of the natives.
Footnote 173:[ (return) ] The general language of North Africa is the Western Arabic, with a knowledge of which language, a traveller may make himself intelligible wherever he may go; either in the negro countries of Sudan, in Egypt, Abyssinia, Sahara, or Barbary.
A knowledge therefore of the African Arabic appears indispensable to this great undertaking; and it should seem that a commercial adventurer is much more likely to obtain his object than a scientific traveller, for this plain reason,--because it is much easier to persuade the Africans that we travel into their country for the purposes of commerce and its result--profit, than to persuade them that we are so anxious to ascertain the course of their rivers!
Accordingly, it was aptly observed by the Negroes of Congo, when they learned that Captain Tuckey came not to trade nor to make war; "What then come for? only to take walk and make book?"