Bouche du Roy

Bouche du Roy forms the estuary where the Mono River, the Grand-Popo lagoon and Lake Ahémé discharge toward the Gulf of Guinea. Its Portuguese-derived name recalls the "mouth of the river," while sixteenth- and seventeenth-century accounts knew the water by other names. Because the outlet shifts and changes depth, navigation is seasonal: canoes pass more easily during the rains, when swollen lakes and lagoons flood the surrounding land and sometimes cut temporary channels through the sandspit. In dry weather the relationship reverses. Sea water enters the estuary, and saltwater fish move into the upstream waters. Hula communities used the drying lagoons to make salt, turning an ecological rhythm into a valued product. The estuary also marked the boundary between the Hula kingdom and polities such as Hueda and Dahomey, so control of the coast mattered politically as well as commercially.