North Eastern Atlantic

Off the Grain Coast, Atlantic waters meet a shore of river mouths and trading settlements. Portuguese sailors called one river the Cestos, after the baskets in which local people brought malagueta pepper to their ships. The spice, known in Europe as grains of paradise, gave this coast its commercial name. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries European visitors sought pepper and ivory in the Cestos region, where local traders determined how the products of the interior reached the shore.