I am informed by Mr Quayle Jones, Chief Justice of Sierra Leone, that at the present day, a seed called the Taku, (with a black spot) is employed by the natives of the Gold Coast for weighing gold. He also tells me that small quantities of gold are measured by a quill in ordinary dealings in the market18. I learn from another private source that 6 Takus = 1 ackie (20 ackies = 1 ounce). From Bosnian’s equating the bean with the red spot to 2 stiver-weights, we can deduce its weight as 2 grs. troy; this result combined with the colour of the bean would make us a à priori conclude that the Damba was the Abrus precatorius, so familiar to us already under its Hindu name of ratti.
Here we have a primitive people with a weight system of their own based on the Damba and Taku, just as the Hindu is based on the ratti, and here too we have another proof that the first of all articles to be weighed is gold. From Bosman we also learn that gold in small quantities was not always weighed, for he says of the inferior gold which was mixed with silver or copper, that it is cast into fetiches (small grotesque figures). “These fetiches are cut into small bits by the negroes of one, two, or three farthings. The negroes know the exact value of these bits so well at sight, that they never are mistaken, and accordingly they sell them to each other without weighing as we do coined money19.” This recalls the practice as regards silver among the Tibetans at the present day.
Crossing to the eastern side of Africa we find the natives of Madagascar employing a system, the basis of which is a grain of rice. “The Malagasy have no circulating medium of their own. Dollars are known more or less throughout the island: but in many of the provinces trade is carried on principally by an exchange of commodities. The Spanish dollar, stamped with the two pillars, bears the highest value. For sums below a dollar the inconvenient method is resorted to in the interior, of weighing the money in every case. Dollars are cut up into small pieces, and four iron weights are used for the half, quarter, eighth, and twelfth of a dollar. Below that amount, divisions are effected by combinations of the four