16 
Value of fish Value of fish Value of total Value of total 
Year. imported. imported. imports. imports. 
Gold Coast. Lagos, Gold Coast. Lagos. 
4 a. 4 os. a. &. 4 
1878 370 0 5 176 3 2 394,152 483,623 
1879 1741510 | 435 9 I 323039 527,871 
1880 No statistics. [ 576 9 0 337,248 376,215 
1881 248 1 II 27315 8 398,123 336,659 
There has been no exportation of fish—naturally. Im- 
ported fish, which is brought mainly from the United 
Kingdom, Germany, and America, is chiefly represented 
by tinned and smoked salmon, lobster, sardines, salt cod 
and ling, red herrings, and mackerel, and is supplied to 
meet the taste of Europeans and Europeanized natives. 
The aborigines, as a rule, prefer their own fish, as will be 
explained later. 
For my own part, I would not be prepared to view these 
statistics as giving the fishing population, for natives often 
combine the work of farming with fishing. There are, of 
course, some who are merely fishermen and nothing more, 
or rather, when they are anything more, they are idlers ; 
although I am glad to acknowledge I have seen many an 
exception to this, in men who have turned, and do turn 
during leisure time, their hands to some other remunerative 
work than fishing; while there are others—and a large 
number—who do not confine themselves to fishing as a sole 
means of livelihood, but as a subsidiary occupation. Idle- 
ness, notwithstanding, prevails much, but this may be 
excusable in view of absence of competition as regards 
production, as also of conditions of climate, and the, for- 
tunately for them, small demand made on them towards 
food provision, Nature having been, and being, so bountiful. 
