Bonny

Bonny, or BONI, a town and a river of Guinea, now in the British Niger protectorate. The river forms an eastern debouchure of the Niger, and falls into the Bight of Biafra, in about 4° 30' N. lat., and 7° 10' E. long. It is accessible at all times of the tide to vessels drawing as much as 18 feet of water, and safe anchorage at all seasons of the year is found within its bar. Its banks are low, swampy, and uncultivated. On the east side, near its mouth, is the town of Bonny, notorious from the 16th to the 19th century as the rendezvous of slave-trading ships. The houses forming the town stand in a swamp where fever prevails; European traders generally take up their quarters on river-boats moored in the current of the Bonny. It exports considerable quantities of palm-oil.