^m. 



CHAPTER VI 



7'NE GUINEA TRADE IN THE SIXTEENTH AND 

 SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 



OTHER West African products in those early days, 

 besides gold, pepper, and Negro slaves, more especially 

 from Senegambia, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, consisted 

 of hides, ivory, civet perfume, indigo, ostrich feathers, gum, and 

 ambergris. Most of these articles are enumerated in Azurara's 

 History of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea by the Portuguese 

 during the First Half of the Fifteenth Century. The hides 

 so often mentioned were firstly the skins of seals, possibly 

 Monachus albiventcr^ which the Portuguese found existing in 

 large numbers along the Sahara coast between Cape Bojador and 

 the Senegal River. They killed these, often fifty at a time, 

 and used triumphantly to bring back their skins and the oil they 

 produced to Prince Henry, who at last got so vexed at the 

 way in which their exploring journeys were stopped by these 

 seal-hunts that he forbade the practice. 



Then in the Senegal and Gambia Rivers they purchased 

 the hides of oxen, goats, and sheep. Acacia gum and ostrich 

 feathers, of course, came from the Sahara coast between the Rio 

 de Oro, Cape Blanco, and the Senegal River, and in a lesser 

 degree from Cape Verde and the Gambia. Ambergris, which 

 is an intestinal product of the Sperm Whale, cast up on the 



^ The Monk seal of the Mediterranean and Eastern Atlantic. 

 70 



