14 
The value of imports for 1880 and 1881 are returned as 
£491,993 and £374,375. These figures include £781 and 
£336 value of imported fish, as also £4,145 and £2,930 for 
introduced salt. Boats and canoes, licensed in 1880 and 
1881, were 689 and 572. 
It would be unnecessary and unimportant to give here 
the local names of fish. You will be amused, but not 
enlightened, to hear that some are “Blue Billies,” others 
“Black Billies,” information which would defy, for the 
purpose of classification, the ingenuity of any fish Authority. 
French West African Settlements. 
As to the French Possessions, generally referred to as 
Senegambia, Gaboon, and Assinee, with a returned popula- 
tion (1878) of 324,038, I know of no systematic fish in- 
dustry beyond, perhaps, the requirements for a hand-to- 
mouth existence and precarious inland trade. 
Gold Coast Colony. 
It is very difficult to form an estimate as to the numbers 
of any native population of a somewhat migratory cha- 
racter and of a Protectorate, for we must remember that 
Her Majesty’s Settlements on the Gold Coast are repre- 
sented by “Colony” and “ Protected Territories,” the 
statements alone of natives as to numbers being uncertain, 
and, I may say, quite unreliable. 
Then, again, natives are peculiarly suspicious, and would 
be disposed to be at once on their guard against supplying 
information which they would view as intended to be 
directed against themselves in the shape of taxation, per- 
haps conscription, as was fancied at places in the Ashantee 
War, 1873-4. a 
No approximate value of the fisheries can be given. 
