Language_, Rev. Christaller, Basel, 1881.] or sixteenth of an ounce, being
the unit of value. The people may be persuaded to take an English
sovereign, but they spurn a French napoleon. Amongst the many desiderata
of the Coast is a law making all our silver coins legal tenders. At
present the natives will scarcely take anything but threepenny-bits, new
and bright and bearing H.B.M.'s 'counterfeit presentment.' Copper has been
tried, but was made to fail by a clever District-commissioner, who refused
to take the metal in payment of Government dues. The old cowrie-currency,
of which the _tapo_, or score, represented two farthings, is all but
extinct. Its name will be preserved in the proverb, 'There is no market
wherein the dove with the pouting breast (the _cypraea_) has not traded.'
The same is the case with the oldest money, round and perforated
quartz-stones, which suggest the ring-coinage of ancient Egypt. From
Inyenápoli, preceded by King Blay, who so managed that a fair path had
been hastily cut through the bush, we struck inland, the course being
northwards, bending to the north-east and east. The first hour, covering
some three miles, lay partly over a flat plain of grass used for thatch,
pimpled with red anthills and broken by lines and patches of dense jungle.
These savannahs are common near the sea; we had already remarked one
behind Béin. They denote the 'false coast,' and they become during the wet
season almost impassable swamps and mud-fields.

Then we struck the valley of 'Ebumesu, winding water,' whose approach,
rank with mire and corded with roots, is the Great Dismal Swamp of Dahome
in miniature. Here, seven and a quarter miles from the mouth, the stream
measures about twenty yards broad, the _thalweg_ is deep and navigable,
and the water, bitumen-coloured with vegetable matter, tastes brackish.
There is the usual wasteful profusion of growth. Ferns ramp upon the
trees; Cameron counted at Akankon two dozen different species within a few
hundred yards. Orchids bunch the boughs and boles of dead forest-giants;