■■^ The Guinea Trade 



weaving It Into cloth, and this art had spread rapidly during 

 the first few centuries of Islam to the banks of the Niger, 

 and thence had reached not only to the countries bordering 

 on the sources of that great river, but the adjoining regions 

 of Senegal and Guinea. Even as early as the sixteenth 

 century it was remarked by the Portuguese that the kings, 



• 30. "the mandingo robe of stoutly woven cotton": groups of kondo 

 people from behind vai country 



chiefs, and headmen of Northern Liberia round about Cape 

 Mount wore the now familiar Mandingo robe of stoutly woven 

 cotton in alternate stripes of blue and white. It is possible 

 that no cotton goods were exported from Europe to West 

 Africa till the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of 

 the eighteenth centuries. Since that time the cotton goods 

 of Lancashire, of Germany, and of Barcelona have almost killed 

 the local industries of weaving and dyeing. 



73 



