Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/405

 is palm-oil, the chief imports being rifles, munitions, textiles, kitchen utensils, hardware, implements of all sorts, mirrors, glassware, and coral.

Brass, the first important trading-place east of the Nun, lies some distance from the coast amid the network of channels connecting the Niger with the Bonny. Here are a few factories on the very verge of the forest, but much of its

trade has, in recent years, been diverted to the Niger The double estuary of Bonny (Okoloma) was formerly connected with that of New Calabar by a common mouth now separated into two channels by an island of recent formation. It gives access to some great highways of trade traversing vast and populous but almost unknown regions in the interior. Bonny was the most frequented station of the "slavers," and as many as three hundred and twenty thousand captives were said to