DAKAR — WHITTLESEY 389 



The town was built to accommodate trade and administration, 

 and its structures express their functions. All the buildings are con- 

 structed of masonry, and most of them are made of rough stones or 

 rubble concealed by smooth stucco. All the larger ones have capacious 

 cisterns in the basement, to catch and store the run-off from the roof. 

 The most conspicuous structures were designed for administration. 

 A fort looms on the mesa, and batteries flank the lower ground. There 

 are also barracks, hospital, church, and buildings for local and colony 

 administration. The rest of the buildings with any pretension were 

 planned to meet the peculiar needs of the slave trade. The ground 

 floor is divided into cells where the captives were locked awaiting 

 deportation. On the floor above are the offices of the trading firm 

 and living quarters for the personnel. From a number of houses 

 balconies overlook the street. Supplementary quarters for the house- 

 hold are on the third story when there is one. All rooms are ranged 

 about a patio, in which a tree or two may be growing. 



In the heyday of the place all available space was utilized. The 

 solid blocks of buildings interfered with the breezes that swept across 

 the island from the surrounding sea. The streets, narrow lanes though 

 they are, were reported as "furnaces between ten o'clock and five."* 

 During the last half century, as the population decreased, buildings 

 were abandoned. Today at least half of the land formerly occupied 

 by buildings and patios either is open or stands as unroofed yards 

 surrounded by ruined walls. This has opened the town to currents 

 of air, which mitigate the heat. The razing of dilapidated buildings 

 has been enforced, especially after epidemics, because the tight-packed 

 town with its nmnerous cisterns has always been a potential center of 

 infection. 



More than once the little white colony has moved temporarily 

 to the peninsula when epidemics have broken out. The first siege of 

 yellow fever occurred about 1779. It so demoralized the community 

 that the forts were demolished, the survivors went to French Guiana, 

 and the governor removed to Saint-Louis.° In addition to soldiers 

 manning the fort, only 200 persons inhabit the island now, and a high 

 percentage of them are aged. The estimate for peak population is 

 6,000, a figure for which no date is given but which presumably refers 

 to the 1830's. Three-fourtlis to four-fifths of them were captives. 



Today Goree is a sleepy, ruined settlement, 40 minutes from Dakar 

 by the launch that makes three or four trips daily. The printery for 

 the colonial government is housed in the building used in prosperous 

 days by the governors. A normal school and a boys' school attract 

 daily a little spate of pupils from Dakar. The small church is too 



* Alfred Marclie, Trois voyages dans TAfrique Occidentale, p. 5. Paris, 1879. 



• Gafflot, op. cit., pp. 75-76. 



