Liberia 



«4- 



Portuguese. He seemed a great lover of the female sex, which 

 was the whole subject with which he entertained us." 



Snoek describes the River Cestos ^ as being the port of an 

 agreeable and friendly country. His sailing ship anchored first 

 before a village called Corra, three miles west of the river 

 mouth. The sea off this part of the coast was more than 

 usually phosphorescent. The people along the banks of a little 

 stream near the sea were much occupied in boiling water to 

 produce salt. The water over the very rocky bar of the Cestos 

 River appears to have had a depth of at least six feet, but even this 

 amount of water would seem to have been too little for the 

 sailing ships of earlier days. These, therefore, must have anchored 

 off the coast outside the river, into which they sent their 

 merchandise in boats. The principal village at the mouth of 

 the River Cestos contained about sixty houses, " very neatly 

 built, and so high that some of them appear three miles out 

 at sea." They differ from those of Cape Mesurado, " only that 

 there are here more Stories " (^i.e. that the houses were built with 

 three or four platforms or stories). The now familiar West Coast 

 "dash" (meaning a tip, a pourboire, a present) makes its appear- 

 ance in Snoek's writings under the form of "dasje." Apparently 

 in trading with the Negroes of the Liberian coast at this time it 

 was necessary to commence operations by giving a dash or present. 

 (Dasje, diminutive of Das in Dutch means a little strip of cloth.) 



The Cavalla River in these times seems to have been the 

 boundary between the fiercely cannibal tribes of what is now 

 the Ivory Coast and the more sophisticated Krumen, on the 

 hither side of Cape Palmas. All the people to the east of the 

 Cavalla River at this period had their front teeth sharpened to 

 a point, and were very wild. 



' Under the mistaken term of Sestre ; but the geographical definition in his 

 contribution to Bosman's work shows it to have been the Cestos. 



