The Negroes Weigh The Gold In Small Balances, Which They Always Carry
About Them.
They make no difference, in point of value, between gold dust
and wrought gold.
In bartering one article for another, the person who
receives the gold always weighs it with his own teelee-kissi. These beans
are sometimes fraudulently soaked in Shea-butter, to make them heavy; and
I once saw a pebble ground exactly into the form of one of them; but such
practices are not very common.
Having now related the substance of what occurs to my recollection
concerning the African mode of obtaining gold from the earth, and its
value in barter, I proceed to the next article, of which I proposed to
treat, namely, _ivory_.
Nothing creates a greater surprise among the Negroes on the sea coast,
than the eagerness displayed by the European traders to procure
elephants' teeth; it being exceedingly difficult to make them comprehend
to what use it is applied. Although they are shown knives with ivory
hafts, combs, and toys of the same material, and are convinced that the
ivory thus manufactured was originally part of a tooth, they are not
satisfied. They suspect that this commodity is more frequently converted
in Europe to purposes of far greater importance, the true nature of which
is studiously concealed from them, lest the price of ivory should be
enhanced. They cannot, they say, easily persuade themselves, that ships
would be built, and voyages undertaken, to procure an article, which had
no other value than that of furnishing handles to knives, &c., when
pieces of wood would answer the purpose equally well.
Elephants are very numerous in the interior of Africa, but they appear to
be a distinct species from those found in Asia. Blumenbach, in his
figures of objects of natural history, has given good drawings of a
grinder of each; and the variation is evident. M. Cuvier also has given
in the _Magazin Encyclopedique_ a clear account of the difference between
them. As I never examined the Asiatic elephant, I have chosen rather to
refer to those writers, than advance this as an opinion of my own. It has
been said that the African elephant is of a less docile nature than the
Asiatic, and incapable of being tamed. The Negroes certainly do not at
present tame them; but when we consider that the Carthaginians had always
tame elephants in their armies, and actually transported some of them to
Italy in the course of the Punic wars, it seems more likely that they
should have possessed the art of taming their own elephants, than have
submitted to the expense of bringing such vast animals from Asia. Perhaps
the barbarous practice of hunting the African elephants for the sake of
their teeth, has rendered them more untractable and savage, than they
were found to be in former times.
The greater part of the ivory which is sold on the Gambia and Senegal
rivers is brought from the interior country. The lands towards the Coast
are too swampy, and too much intersected with creeks and rivers, for so
bulky an animal as the elephant to travel through, without being
discovered; and when once the natives discern the marks of his feet in
the earth, the whole village is up in arms.
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