EXPORTS OF ACCRA. 
153 
Their instruments are few and extremely rude, yet they 
make very beautiful chains, and finish them in a style 
hardly to be expected from such imperfect means. The 
rings are mostly plaited, of a fine cable-twisted wire, and 
are pretty. The chief value of the jewellery of this 
and the other places on the coast, arises fi-om the purity 
of the gold employed, scarcely any alloy being admitted. 
Many of the articles sent from thence to Europe are 
melted down, and re-manufactured with a remunerative 
admixture of less valuable metals. 
The exports of Cape Coast and Accra are more 
valuable than abundant, being principally gold dust, 
ivory, gums, palm oil, coffee, and latterly, the ground- 
nut, Arachis hypogea, which, as containing an excel- 
lent oil, is much in demand. The imports are chiefly 
cotton goods, earthenware, muskets, knives, gun- 
powder, beads, aguadiente, tobacco, and such European 
luxuries as are required by our countrymen resident 
there. 
All our merchants regretted the former unfortunate 
collisions with the Ashanti kingdom, and spoke of 
of them as having destroyed the fair prospect which once 
existed of opening up the interior of Africa to our com- 
merce, and the gradual diffusion of more enlightened 
views among the native Princes. At one time, the 
amount of British manufactures carried to Kumasi was 
very great, but it almost ceased with the Ashanti wars ; 
and although said to be of late somewhat increasing, it 
will require a long period to re-establish the traffic. 
