-^ The Guinea Trade 



shores of the Atlantic and other oceans, seems to have been 

 obtained from the Cape Verde Peninsula. It was much valued 

 in the Middle Ages as the component part of perfumes, and 

 most of all because of its supposed aphrodisiac qualities. Ijidigo 

 came from the Gambia and the rivers of Guinea, and the scent- 

 bags of the civet cat from all points on the coast between the 

 mouth of the Senegal and Liberia, in which latter country the civet 

 cat is extremely common at the present day. There was a 

 great demand for the civet perfume during the fifteenth and 

 sixteenth centuries, and besides the dried pods or pouches 

 cut from the dead animal, live civet cats were esteemed a 

 very choice present, a gift made from time to time by the 

 chiefs of the coast regions to the Portuguese captains. Ivory 

 was obtained in large quantities from the Senegal River, the 

 Gambia, Sierra Leone, the Liberian coast, and from that less 

 known region between Liberia and the Gold Coast which to 

 this day is called " the Ivory Coast." But in the fifteenth and 

 sixteenth centuries it was chiefly Sierra Leone and Northern 

 Liberia that furnished ivory. It seems to have been a common 

 incident for chiefs or native traders in the Vai and Gallinhas 

 countries near the coast to produce a hundred tusks of 

 considerable size and weight at one deal. Camwood {Baphia 

 r.itida)^ which produces a crimson dye, was much sought 

 after from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. ' 



The traditions of the Norman traders who visited Liberia 

 in the fourteenth century (if they be founded on fact), and 

 the authentic records of the Portuguese commerce with that 

 country before 1460 and 1560, reveal a condition of civilisa- 

 tion and well-being amongst the untutored natives which is 

 somewhat in contrast to what one finds on the same coast 

 at the present day ; still more in contrast with the condition 

 of the Liberian coast-lands in the early part of the nineteenth 



71 



