CHAP. IT. 



SOUTHERN AFRICA. 6 I 



which are brought have been exchanged, and is 

 conducted in the manner here described because 

 they have no interpreters, and do not under- 

 stand the language of each other." 



The same mode of conducting trade was 

 adopted by the western Moors, who exchanged 

 goods with some of the barbarous nations on the 

 banks of the Niger, as described by Shaw 1 and 

 confirmed by Wadstrom 2 , as well as by Com- 

 modore Stewart in his account of his embassy to 

 Mequinez in 1721. 



We certainly can form no idea respecting 

 the quantity of gold which these Macrobians 

 furnished to commerce. The fact of their 

 yielding it even as early as the time of Cam- 

 byses, 500 years B. C., is sufficiently proved by 

 the contempt which they manifested at the in- 

 significant present of gold chains which the 

 nation of the Ichthyophagi, who acted the part 

 of ambassadors on behalf of the Persian mon- 

 arch, brought to them from him. 



This tribe was only one among many in the 

 southern part of Africa who obtained gold from 

 the rapid streams, and conveyed it by ways of 

 which we can only form conjecture from know- 

 ing somewhat of the present practice of those 

 people. There can be no doubt, however, that 



1 Shaw's Travels, p. 239. 



2 Wadstrom's Colonization, p. 24. 



