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Updated: June 27, 2025
In order to give a just idea of the trade and profits on different articles sold at Sansanding, I have annexed a list of European and African articles, with their respective values in cowries, the great medium of exchange and the general currency of Bambarra. Value in Cowries. A musket 6 to 7000 A cutlass 1500 to 2000 A flint 40 Gunpowder, one bottle 3000 Amber No. 1. 1000 Ditto No. 2. 800
As the natives are unacquainted with arithmetic, their numerical calculations are carried on by counters of pebbles, gun-flints, or cowries.
Before going home we had some more polite conversation, during which the queen played with a toy in the shape of a cocoa du mer, studded all over with cowries: this was a sort of doll, or symbol of a baby and her dandling it was held to indicate that she would ever remain a widow.
In each stall only a single article is sold, the chief being beef, beer, beads, indigo, cloth, elephants teeth, and slaves; besides which one side of the square is entirely devoted to salt the staple commodity of the place. The value of the articles is paid in cowries, the chief currency of central Africa.
But then, one would not set such a precious jewel in lead or popper, but in pure gold; ay, and add a circlet of brilliants to set it off with. Be a good fellow, Adam, and undertake the setting my project in proper colours before the Doctor. I am sure, the wisest thing for him and Menie both, is to permit me to spend this short time of probation in the land of cowries.
One of their journals and a box of books, with the medicine chest and a few articles of clothing were found, and after a palaver were restored; but the whole of Richard Lander's journal with the exception of one note-book, Mr Park's gun and thirty-six of their cutlasses and pistols, some elephant tusks, ostrich feathers, leopard-skins, and a variety of seeds had all been lost, as well as their remaining cowries, buttons, and needles, which were so important to enable them to purchase food.
We picked up at least twenty different sorts of gracefully shaped pieces of coral, and quantities of shells of an infinite variety of form and colour; cowries, helmet-shells, the shells from which cameos are sometimes cut; mother-of-pearl shells, and a large spiral univalve, nearly a foot long, with dark brown spots and stripes on a delicate cream-coloured ground, like the skin of a tiger or leopard.
Their heads are differently treated from those of the Soneeassees, for both men and women have the crown shaved quite smooth. Both sexes wear a piece of cloth checked like shepherd's plaid. They have great strings of wooden beads, or malâhs, turned out of the stalks of the holy toolsie, round their necks; and they generally collect their rice and cowries in a dried gourd-shell.
By the light of the young moon she saw that it was grasping tightly a sort of tassel made of cowries which hung round his neck by a string. He covered the shells with his fingers, and showed his teeth. She let his hand go. "What is it?" she asked. "Yes," he answered. She turned and went into the tent, and he flitted away like a shadow.
Lindsay, who made a large fortune by working the lime quarries and thus converting into cash the millions of cowries in which the land-revenue of Sylhet was paid, appears to have imagined that the Khasis, whom he calls "a tribe of independent Tartars," were in direct relations with China, and imported thence the silk cloths which they brought down for sale in the Sylhet markets.
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