44 
“ Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf ; 
Witches, mummy ; maw, and gulf, 
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark.” 
Lagos bar is noted as a favourable resort for this sea 
monster; and of the river St. John’s, in Liberia, Burton 
speaks that “it owns a bar as infamous as that of Lagos 
for surf and sharks.” 
Of the Dahomean coast, the beach has been often un- 
workable as regards landing and loading, as the canoe- 
men (Fantees or Accras, commonly known as “ Minas”), 
whenever (and it is of frequent occurrence) one of them 
falls a victim to a shark, have absconded from time to time 
in abject terror. From Cootenoo, for instance, it is not an 
unusual thing to have at Lagos runaway crews amounting 
to sixty or eighty men who have escaped by the beach. 
The same has happened frequently in the other direction 
from Whydah. I was led to believe early this year, before 
I left Africa, that these means of escape from their em- 
ployers had been cut off by Dahomean guards at either 
end. Here the French commercial houses have tried with 
some success the drift-net ; they have also used dynamite 
devices for the promotion of confidence among their 
employés, rather than the effective system, if not of 
gradual clearance, at least of considerable thinning. 
In view of the field presented, it is astonishing why 
sharks are not put to use as in Norway, where they are 
captured for their livers ; or as in India and China, where 
the fins form a very important article in trade, the people 
of the former country preparing from them, in addition to 
other extracts, gelatine. 
In Norway some of the fish furnish livers weighing only 
from 25 to 30|bs., while from others livers of 220 to 450 lbs 
are obtained. 
