ON THE KOLA-NET OF TROPICAL WEST AFRICA. 
453 
articulate the letter “r,” were compelled to adopt that of so that the 
word Guro, or G'oro, became converted into that of Gola or Kola , the substitu¬ 
tion of these, and, in fact other letters, being of proverbial occurrence, to those 
conversant with the African languages. This modified term was ultimately 
adopted by the Portguese, first in the neighbourhood, but long antecedent to 
the foundation, of the colony of Sierra Leone, and within a brief period, after the 
discovery of the river of the same name. In this locality they were actively 
engaged in accumulating cargoes of the Ivola-nut by means of numerous small 
vessels detached to different portions of the coast for this purpose,—a custom con¬ 
tinued so late as the commencement of the present century, and mentioned by 
Afzelius, in his report on the vegetable resources of the infant settlement of Sierra 
Leone for 1794. 
From the great reputation these nuts had acquired, previous to the sojourn of 
the English in West Africa, we may suppose that no length of time elapsed, 
before they adopted the example of their predecessors. In the old books of 
ravels, we may observe various descriptive details, in which their virtues, and 
qualities are conspicuously extolled. Premising that the following remarks 
pertain more to the Senegal, and Gambia rivers, where this production is not in¬ 
digenous, as affording perhaps the most appropriate illustration of what may be 
termed the most invaluable of all the negro luxuries. It had been noticed by 
the English traders, among the Mandingo’s of the Gambia, that in their 
limited traffic with the inhabitants of the interior, they carried with them large 
quantities of salt, either of native or foreign manufacture, and received in ex¬ 
change gold dust, and a roundish, compressed, bitter nut,*resembling a European 
chestnut, and known by the appellation of Gola , or Kola. They were purchased 
after a toilsome journey, a great distance inland. They were considered of such in¬ 
estimable value that ten were thought to be a gift worthy of a king, and that for the 
moderate number of fifty, a man might purchase a wife out of the best families in 
the kingdom. Kay, the elder and wealthier people, rather than be deprived of 
this luxury from loss of teeth, proceeding from the decrepitude of advanced age, 
carried with them a small pestle and mortar, by the aid of which, they reduced 
the nuts into a form of powder.; and, by occasionally placing small portions on 
their tongue, thus secured all the benefits which would have accrued, if the nut 
had been eaten entire. 
Jobson, an English merchant, who was a resident in the Gambia about 1620, 
launches forth into fulsome encomiums on their properties, especially so when 
he relates that after mastication, they rendered river-water so sweet as to make 
it resemble white wine mixed with sugar, and that its duicificant powers extended 
equally to tobacco. Modern experience, however, has not indorsed such extra¬ 
vagant assertions. He further states that six of these seeds were esteemed a pre¬ 
sent of special consideration, when transmitted to European factors on the 
Gambia. He also appears to have been acquainted with the fact that the Portu¬ 
guese, even in his day, furnished the inferior course of the river, through com¬ 
municating creeks, with this fruit from their factories atBissao and Cadico, these 
again being supplied by imports, from the fertile regions in the neighbourhood 
of Sierra Leone and elsewhere. 
Afzelius, in the botanical report previously alluded to, includes among the 
medicinal plants of the colony, the “ famous fruit ” of the Kola, which, he ob¬ 
serves, was so highly prized by the natives that they attributed similar remedial 
virtues to it as to the Peruvian bark; and a subsequent official report of 
the African Institution, announces that the tonic qualities of these nuts had be¬ 
come so well known, that the travelling merchants in the vicinity of Sierra 
Leone, had exported them to every portion of the Continent, even to such remote 
countries as Egypt, and Abyssinia! 
Since that time, few volumes of travels or discoveries in West or Central 
