Note 122 — CHAP. LXVII.

It is a highly interesting fact, that we find this native name, which is given to calico in the region of the Niger, already mentioned by that most eminent and clear-sighted of Arab geographers, Ábu ʿObaid Allah el Bekrí, in the middle of the eleventh century, or fully 800 years ago. For, in describing the manufacture of cotton in the town of Silla, which has become so familiar to Europeans in consequence of Mungo Park’s adventures, he expressly mentions that this calico was called “shígge” by the natives, الازر المسماة بالشكيات. (El Bekrí, ed. de Slane, 1857, p. 173.) Great interest is imparted by such incidents to the life of a region which, to the common observer, seems dead and uninteresting.