Note 165 — Chapter VI
Reading edition
Barbot, Book IV., chap. i., speaks of the “country of Tafou, in which are said to be mines of gold”; but he clearly did not know its whereabouts. According to Mr. Duncan (vol. ii., p. 307), gold is as plentiful in Dahome as in Ashanti; but it is quite superseded by the slave-trade. No one believes him. It is not a little curious that these people, like the Mandengas, the Fanti of the Gold Coast, and the natives of the Gaboon river, call gold “Sika.” Mr. R. Bruce Walker, now of Lagos, informs me that, “At R. Frisco, near C. Lahou, which is the most westerly point on the West African coast, when gold is found, the people call it Asika.” All these dialects being totally different, the word must have been borrowed by one tribe from the other, suggesting that all do not produce the metal. Can it be connected with the Asiatic “Sikkeh”?