had then nearly the following value:--

18 gun flints, )
48 leaves of tobacco, ) one minkalli.
20 charges of gunpowder, )
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 _teelee-kissi_, (a black
bean, six of which make the weight of one minkalli;) a chicken, one
teelee-kissi; a sheep, three teelee-kissi; 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 teelee-kissi. 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_.

Nothing creates a greater surprise among the Negroes on the sea coast,