The price of a prime slave, when I was at
Kamalia, was from twelve to nine minkallies, and European
commodities had then nearly the following value:-
18 gun-flints,
48 leaves of tobacco, } one
20 charges of gunpowder, } minkalli.
A cutlass, }
A musket, from three to four minkallies.
The produce of the country and the different necessaries of life,
when exchanged for gold, sold as follows:-
Common provisions for one day, the weight of one teeleekissi (a
black bean, six of which make the weight of one minkalli); a
chicken, one teeleekissi; a sheep, three teeleekissi; a bullock, one
minkalli; a horse, from ten to seventeen minkallies.
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 teeleekissi. 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.
