Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/189

 TRADE OF SENEGAL. 151 peans can only be temporary residents in Senegambia. The vital statistics between 1843 and 1847 show that amongst them the mortality is fourfold the birth-rate. Since then matters have not mended, and French society has still to be maintained at Saint-Louis, Dakar, and Rufisque by the constant arrival of fresh recruits. Even the Eurafricans, or French half-castes, have failed to establish themselves as an independent community in the country. After four centuries of occupation this element is very slight, and the statistics carefully collected by scientific medical men clearly show that the offspring of mixed alliances born on the seaboard frequently die young, while the unions of the survivors are mostly childless. Few families have survived to the fourth generation, although M. Corre has shown that in Saint-Louis the proportion of births over deaths in this section of thecommunitv was seven to four. In Senegambia no Creole form of speech has sprung up like those of the Antilles and Louisiana. Wolof is still the most current language on the coast, while in the interior Arabic and Fulah are indispensable for intercourse with the Moors and Fulahs. French, however, is slowly gaining ground, more through the personal influence of the native soldiers and sailors than through the systematic instruction of paid teachers. Trade and Agriculture. During the last few years the trade of Senegal has acquired considerable expan- sion. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the traffic of the chartered companies consisted chiefly in procuring Negroes for the "West Indian plantations. In 1682 an " Indian piece," that is, a Negro of prime quality, costing only ten livres in Senegal, fetched as much as a hundred crowns in the American colonies, and the yearly exportation averaged one thousand five hundred souls. This traffic did not completely cease as a legalised industry till the Restoration, after which the only staple of trade was gum, derived from various species of acacia, adansonia, seyal, and other plants growing in the territory of the Moors on the north side of the river. The forests of gummiferous trees, some of which cover several hundred square miles, are now in the exclusive power of the Trarza, Brakna and Dwa'ish tribes, or rather of the tribal chiefs, who employ their captives on the plantations. The produce, mostly bought up by Bordeaux houses, is paid for partly in cash, partly in kind — millet, rice, biscuits, tobacco, rifles, ammunition, textiles, and espe- cially " guineas," that is, pieces of cotton 50 feet long, which were long admitted as the unit of value in the barter trade throughout Senegal. In good years the yield of gum exceeds six million pounds, and might be greatly increased by planting acacias in the Futa district south of the river, and by working the forests more systematically. For some years the chief staple of export has been the ground-nut (Arachis hypogcBo), the cultivation of which has gradually spread along the middle Senegal, in Cayor and Salum, since it began to be exported in 1844. From the agricultural point of view the ground-nut presents the great advantage of improving instead of