Report on the Gambia / Colonial Office.

Date:
[1955]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the Gambia / Colonial Office. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Production The average number of livestock (in round figures) slaughtered per annum is as follows : Cattle Sheep (a) Pigs Goats Colony Area including Bathurst . 3,000 400 1,000 700 Western Division 300 80 10 500 MacCarthy Island Division. 700 100 — 200 Central Division 400 100 — 80 (a) The figures for sheep are unreliable as many more arc killed privately. A large amount of milk is sold in Western Division for consumption in Bathurst. Hides and skins are rough-cured by firms in Bathurst and exported. The average quantity per annum amounts to 37 tons. Some hides also find their way to Portuguese Guinea. FISHING The seas off the Atlantic coast provide excellent fishing grounds which are worked by fishermen from the coastal villages and from Bathurst, and from as far afield as the Senegal and Portuguese and French Guinea. In the main the fishing canoes depend upon oar and wind, but experiments in using outboard engines have met with sufficient success to warrant making loans for the purchase of engines to be fitted to canoes. There is a fairly well organised system of distribution by bicycle and lorry from the fishing villages to Bathurst and inland for a distance of some seventy miles. The fish smoking and drying industry is well established in the Kombo districts on a small scale, and considerable quantities of cured fish are not only supplied to Bathurst and the Protectorate but also to Freetown. The local fishermen have shown interest in the activities of the Co-operative Department and it is hoped that both fishing and market¬ ing may be organised in the Colony area on co-operative lines to the mutual benefit of producers and consumers. Up-river, fishermen from the Senegal predominate. Their large ocean-going canoes may be seen at all times of the year, but especially in the trade season when they import salt which, with the fish they catch, is sold or exchanged for rice, millet and other grains for export to the Senegal. The fishing school at Genieri has had some success in training local men in fishing techniques and the use, manufacture and repair of nets, lines, and traps. The school has now been moved to Sankwia nearer the Divisional headquarters, to facilitate closer supervision. SHIPBUILDING In spite of the progress in mechanisation, an old established cutter building industry is still followed by Gambian shipwrights. The cutters, which are all sailing vessels without auxiliary power, are substantially
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