Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/308

 252 WEST AFEICA. Between Accra and tlie Yolta lie the little fishing villages of Tcm, Prampram, Big Ningo (Fredenshorg), and a few others buried amidst the coco-palms here fring- ing the coast. The natives are said to have often collected gold on a reef near the shore, but the precious metal is revealed only at certain feasts and through the intercession of a potent fetish. The Yolta basin, which reaches inland far beyond the British possessions, contains some trading centres visited by the Mohammedans of the Niger for the purchase of the coast produce and European wares introduced especially through the Assini and Kinjabo routes. Bontuku, on the Tin in Gyaman (Gaman), a con- federacy of seventeen " kingdoms," was visited for the first time by Lonsdale in 1882. Since the fall of Cumassi it has become a thriving place, dealing chiefly in gold dust and local cotton fabrics, and inhabited mainly by Wangaras, or Moham- medan Mandingans. In the valley of the Kong, five days farther north, has been founded the new capital, Hirabo, in the Mandingan territory between the Niger and Volta basins. In 1884, Brandon Kirby reached Qnantampoh {Kutampo), the Tintinpoh of the Mussulmans, a city situated on a southern affluent of the Upper Yolta, 70 miles north of Cumassi. At that time this great emporium contained nearly forty thousand inhabitants, natives of every country between Sierra- Leone and Lake Tsad, all living in separate communities under their respective chiefs. The province of Koranza, between Quantampoh and the Ashanti state, has also received numerous immigrants from the unsettled districts in the south. During a long period of peace it has become a prosperous country, studded with populous villages and doing a profitable export trade in kola-nuts. Afeobu (Atabuobu), lying on a grassy plain watered by the headstreams of the Poro and Sene, afiluents of the Yolta, is capital of the " kingdom " of Brong. It appears to have been formerly a very large place, and still comprises several quarters connected by avenues of shady trees and surrounded by heaps of grass- grown ruins. Its decay is due to the closure of the two trade routes connecting Cumassi with Salaga, and by which gold and kola-nuts were formerly exported to North Sudan. Salaga, first visited in 1875 by Bonnat, although much reduced, is still a con- siderable centre of trade, with a population reduced from twenty thousand in 1877 to ten thousand in 1885. The suppression of the slave trade all along the seaboard has ruined the Salaga dealers in human flesh, and at present the staple exports are cattle and kola-nuts. The town has an Arab appearance with its mosques and schools, its tanneries, weaving, goldsmiths' work, and other industries, all carried on as in North Africa, and the products exposed in the same way for sale in the bazaars. Some 50 miles to the north-east, and also in the valley of a northern affluent of the Yolta, stand Jendi {Yendi, Yanda^ Yene), another large trading place and capital of Dagomba, a great kingdom which stretches northwards to the Mandingan territory in the direction of the Niger. But the trade of Jendi seems to have been affected by the same causes that have reduced that of Salaga. At present