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The Guinea Trade 



coming along the Niger by the same Muhammadan agency as 

 had introduced rice and horses into the same regions. But the 

 Portuguese seem to have brought over the sugar-cane and 

 sugar from Brazil before their trade with West Africa had 

 been much more than a hundred years old, though, on the 

 other hand, the sugar- cane did not exist in the New World 

 when first discovered in the fifteenth century. The Spaniards 

 introduced the sugar-cane from West Africa to Hispaniola 

 (Hayti) in the early part of the sixteenth century. 



Perhaps the most effective European trade goods of these 

 days were beads from Venice and red coral from the Medi- 

 terranean. It is curious that in contradistinction to North- 

 I east Africa and Asia, coined money, silver especially (assuming 

 the African had as much gold in his own country as he 

 wanted), should have taken so little hold in the West African 

 trade even down to the present day. 



Silks and velvets began to be introduced from the middle 

 of the seventeenth century.^ 



And what were the ships in which these early discoveries 

 of West Africa were made .? Mr. Charles Raymond Beazley, 

 quoting Ca' da Mosto,^ Osorio, and Candido Correa, describes 

 the average exploring ship of the fifteenth century as follows : 

 *' They were usually twenty to thirty metres long and six to 

 eight metres in breadth ; were equipped with three masts 



^ Dapper gives a list of the trade goods of the Dutch on the Sierra Leone- 

 Liberia coast in the middle of the seventeenth century ; — Iron bars, hempen cloth, 

 earthenware basins and pots, buttons, beads, copper medals, bracelets, ear-rings, 

 axes, sailors' knives, collars (!), coarse lace, glassware, Indian cotton goods, mostly 

 of red patterns, Spanish wines, olive oil, brandy, and silk kerchiefs or waist-belts 

 for the women. To this list we may extract from Andrew Battel's sixteenth- 

 century experiences " long glass beads, round blue beads, seed beads, looking- 

 glasses, red and blue coarse woollen cloth, and Irish rugs " (frieze). 



^ In his introduction to his joint translation with iMr. Prestage of the Chronicle 

 of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea by Azurara, published by the Hakluyt 

 Society. 



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