“In the year 1682 the gold trade yielded hardly 45 per cent. to our French ships, clear of any charges; but that might be imputed to the great [number] of trading ships of several European nations which happened to be at that time on the coast, whereof I counted 42 in less than a month’s time: had the number been half as great that trade would have appeared 60 per cent. or more, and if a cargo were properly composed it might well clear 70 per cent. in a small ship sailing with little charge, and the voyage directly home from this coast not to exceed 7 or 8 months out and home, if well managed.”
These observations of Barbot’s are alike interesting and instructive, and in principle applicable to the trade to-day. Do not imagine that Barbot was an early member of the Aborigines’ Protection Society when he holds forth on the way in which Europeans “in former ages” basely dealt with the angelic confidence of the Blacks. One of his great charms is the different opinions on general principles, &c., he can hold without noticing it himself: of course this necessitates your reading Barbot right through, and that means 668 pages folio in double column, or something like 2,772 pages of a modern book; but that’s no matter, for he is uniformly charming and reeks with information.
Well, there are other places in Barbot where he speaks, evidently with convictions, of “this rascal fellow Black,” &c. and gives long accounts of the way in which the black man cheats with false weights and measures, and adulterates; and if you absorb the whole of his information and test it against your own knowledge, and combine it with that of others, I think you will come to the conclusion that it is not necessary for the philanthropist to fidget about the way the European does his side to the trade; the moralist may drop a large and heavy tear on both white and black, but that is all that is required from him. Unfortunately this is not all that is done nowadays: the black has got hold of Governmental opinion, and just when he is more than keeping his end up in commercial transactions, he has got the Government to handicap his white fellow-trader with a mass of heavy dues and irritating restrictions, which will end most certainly in stifling trade. My firm conviction is that black and white traders should be left to settle their own affairs among themselves.
SELECTION OF GOODS FOR FIDA OR ONIDAH, CALLED BY THE FRENCH JUIDA, NOW KNOWN AS DAHOMEY, WITH MAIN SEAPORT WHYDAH.
The French opened trade in this district in 1669, when the Dutch were already there.
“The main export of this coast was ‘slaves, cotton cloth, and blue stones, called agoy or accory, very valuable on the Gold Coast.’
“The best commodity the Europeans can carry thither to purchase is Boejies or cawries, so much valued by the natives, being the current coin there and at Popo, Fida, Benin and other countries further east, without which it is scarcely possible to traffic there. Near to Boejies the flat iron bars for the round or square will not do, and again next to iron, fine long coral, China sarcenets, gilt leather, white damask and red, red cloth with large lists, copper bowls or cups, brass rings, Venice beads or bugles of several colours, agalis, gilded looking glasses, Leyden serges, platilles, linen morees, salampores, red chints, broad and narrow tapsiels, blue canequins, broad gunez and narrow (a sort of linen), double canequins, French brandy in ankers or half-ankers [(the anker being a 16 gallon rundlet)], canary and malmsey, black caudebec hats, Italian taffeties, white or red cloth of gold or silver, Dutch knives, Bosmans, striped armoizins, with white or flowered, gold and silver brocadel, firelocks, muskets, gunpowder, large beads from Rouen, white flowered sarcenets, Indian armorzins and damask napkins, large coral earrings, cutlaces gilded and broad, silk scarfs large umbrellors, pieces of eight, long pyramidal bells.”
All the above-mentioned goods are also proper for the trade in Benin, Rio Lagos and all along the coast to Rio Gabon.
BENIN TRADE GOODS.
“Exports, 1678: cotton cloths like those of Rio Lagos, women slaves, for men slaves (though they be all foreigners, for none of the natives can be sold as such) are not allowed to be exported, but must stay there; jasper stones, a few tigers’ or leopards’ skins, acory or blue coral, elephants’ teeth, some pieminto, or pepper. The blue coral grows in branching bushes like the red coral at the bottom of the rivers and lakes in Benin, which the natives have a peculiar art to grind or work into beads like olives, and is a very profitable merchandise at the Gold Coast, as has been observed.