Few questions in historical geography have been more keenly discussed than that of the first discovery of Guinea by the navigators of modern Europe. Lancelot Malocello, a Genoese, in 1270 reached at least as far as the Canaries. The first direct attempt to find a sea route to India was, it is said, also made by Genoese, Ugolino and Guido de Vivaldo, Tedisio Doria and others who equipped two galleys and sailed south along the African coast in 1291. Beyond the fact that they passed Cape Nun there is no trustworthy record of their voyage. In 1346 a Catalan expedition started for “the river of gold” on the Guinea coast; its fate is unknown. The French claim that between 1364 and 1410 the people of Dieppe sent out several expeditions to Guinea; and Jean de Béthencourt, who settled in the Canaries about 1402, made explorations towards the south. At length the consecutive efforts of the navigators employed by Prince Henry of Portugal—Gil Eannes, Diniz Diaz, Nuno Tristam, Alvaro Fernandez, Cadamosto, Usodimare and Diego Gomez—made known the coast as far as the Gambia, and by the end of the 15th century the whole region was familiar to Europeans.
For further information see [Senegal], [Gold Coast], [Ivory Coast], [French Guinea], [Portuguese Guinea], [Liberia], &c. For the history of European discoveries, consult G. E. de Azurara, Chronica de descobrimento e conquista de Guiné, published, with an introduction, by Barros de Santarem (Paris, 1841), English translation, The Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, by C. R. Beazley and E. Prestage (Hakluyt Society publications, 2 vols., London, 1896-1899, vol. ii. has an introduction on the early history of African exploration, &c. with full bibliographical notes). L. Estancelin, Recherches sur les voyages et découvertes des navigateurs normands en Afrique (Paris, 1832); Villault de Bellefond, Relation des costes d’Afrique appellées Guinée (Paris, 1669); Père Labat, Nouvelle Relation de l’Afrique occidentale (Paris, 1728); Desmarquets, Mém. chron. pour servir à l’hist. de Dieppe (1875); Santarem, Priorité de la découverte des pays situés sur la côte occidentale d’Afrique (Paris, 1842); R. H. Major, Life of Prince Henry the Navigator (London, 1868); and the elaborate review of Major’s work by M. Codine in the Bulletin de la Soc. de Géog. (1873); A. E. Nordenskiöld, Periplus (Stockholm, 1897); The Story of Africa, vol. i. (London, 1892), edited by Dr Robert Brown.
[1] Guinea may, however, be derived from Ghana (or Ghanata) the name of the oldest known state in the western Sudan. Ghana dates, according to some authorities, from the 3rd century A.D. From the 7th to the 12th century it was a powerful empire, its dominions extending, apparently, from the Atlantic to the Niger bend. At one time Jenné was included within its borders. Ghana was finally conquered by the Mandingo kings of Melle in the 13th century. Its capital, also called Ghana, was west of the Niger, and is generally placed some 200 m. west of Jenné. In this district L. Desplagnes discovered in 1907 numerous remains of a once extensive city, which he identified as those of Ghana. The ruins lie 25 m. W. of the Niger, on both banks of a marigot, and are about 40 m. N. by E. of Kulikoro (see La Géographie, xvi. 329). By some writers Ghana city is, however, identified with Walata, which town is mentioned by Arab historians as the capital of Ghanata. The identification of Ghana city with Jenné is not justified, though Idrisi seems to be describing Jenné when writing of “Ghana the Great.”
GUINEA, a gold coin at one time current in the United Kingdom. It was first coined in 1663, in the reign of Charles II., from gold imported from the Guinea coast of West Africa by a company of merchants trading under charter from the British crown—hence the name. Many of the first guineas bore an elephant on one side, this being the stamp of the company; in 1675 a castle was added. Issued at the same time as the guinea were five-guinea, two-guinea and half-guinea pieces. The current value of the guinea on its first issue was twenty shillings. It was subsidiary to the silver coinage, but this latter was in such an unsatisfactory state that the guinea in course of time became over-valued in relation to silver, so much so that in 1694 it had risen in value to thirty shillings. The rehabilitation of the silver coinage in William III.’s reign brought down the value of the guinea to 21s. 6d. in 1698, at which it stood until 1717, when its value was fixed at twenty-one shillings. This value the guinea retained until its disappearance from the coinage. It was last coined in 1813, and was superseded in 1817 by the present principal gold coin, the sovereign. In 1718 the quarter-guinea was first coined. The third-guinea was first struck in George III.’s reign (1787). To George III.’s reign also belongs the “spade-guinea,” a guinea having the shield on the reverse pointed at the base or spade-shaped. It is still customary to pay subscriptions, professional fees and honoraria of all kinds, in terms of “guineas,” a guinea being twenty-one shillings.
GUINEA FOWL, a well-known domestic gallinaceous bird, so called from the country whence in modern times it was brought to Europe, the Meleagris and Avis or Gallina Numidica of ancient authors.[1] Little is positively known of the wild stock to which we owe our tame birds, nor can the period of its reintroduction (for there is apparently no evidence of its domestication being continuous from the time of the Romans) be assigned more than roughly to that of the African discoveries of the Portuguese. It does not seem to have been commonly known till the middle of the 16th century, when John Caius sent a description and figure, with the name Gallus Mauritanus, to Gesner, who published both in his Paralipomena in 1555, and in the same year Belon also gave a notice and woodcut under the name of Poulle de la Guinée; but while the former authors properly referred their bird to the ancient Meleagris, the latter confounded the Meleagris and the turkey.
The ordinary guinea fowl of the poultry-yard (see also [Poultry and Poultry-Farming]) is the Numida meleagris of ornithologists. The chief or only changes which domestication seems to have induced in its appearance are a tendency to albinism generally shown in the plumage of its lower parts, and frequently, though not always, the conversion of the colour of its legs and feet from dark greyish-brown to bright orange. That the home of this species is West Africa from the Gambia[2] to the Gaboon is certain, but its range in the interior is quite unknown. It appears to have been imported early into the Cape Verd Islands, where, as also in some of the Greater Antilles and in Ascension, it has run wild. Representing the species in South Africa we have the N. coronata, which is very numerous from the Cape Colony to Ovampoland, and the N. cornuta of Drs Finsch and Hartlaub, which replaces it in the west as far as the Zambesi. Madagascar also has its peculiar species, distinguishable by its red crown, the N. mitrata of Pallas, a name which has often been misapplied to the last. This bird has been introduced to Rodriguez, where it is now found wild. Abyssinia is inhabited by another species, the N. ptilorhyncha,[3] which differs from all the foregoing by the absence of any red colouring about the head. Very different from all of them, and the finest species known, is the N. vulturina of Zanzibar, conspicuous by the bright blue in its plumage, the hackles that adorn the lower part of its neck, and its long tail. By some writers it is thought to form a separate genus, Acryllium. All these guinea fowls except the last are characterized by having the crown bare of feathers and elevated into a bony “helmet,” but there is another group (to which the name Guttera has been given) in which a thick tuft of feathers ornaments the top of the head. This contains four or five species, all inhabiting some part or other of Africa, the best known being the N. cristata from Sierra Leone and other places on the western coast. This bird, apparently mentioned by Marcgrave more than 200 years ago, but first described by Pallas, is remarkable for the structure—unique, if not possessed by its representative forms—of its furcula, where the head, instead of being the thin plate found in all other Gallinae, is a hollow cup opening upwards, into which the trachea dips, and then emerges on its way to the lungs. Allied to the genus Numida, but readily distinguished form among other characters by the possession of spurs and the absence of a helmet, are two very rare forms, Agelastes and Phasidus, both from western Africa. Of their habits nothing is known. All these birds are beautifully figured in Elliot’s Monograph of the Phasianidae, from drawings by Wolf.
(A. N.)