Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index Archibald Dalzel (1740-1811) was a British adventurer and Governor of the Gold Coast (now Ghana). He went to Africa as a surgeon in 1763 and returned to England in 1770. During this time he served four years as governor of Whydah (now Ouidah, Benin). He observed that the people at Whydah "pay a kind of veneration to a particular species of large snake, which is very gentle." Appointed by the Committee of Merchants that was in charge of the Gold Coast at the time, he served as governor in two periods: 31 March 1792 - 16 December 1798, and 28 April 1800 - 30 September 1802. In 1793 he published The history of Dahomy, an inland kingdom of Africa; comp. from authentic memoirs; with an introduction and notes where he argued that the raiding of Dahomean villages for slaves was saving them from the greater evil of being human sacrifices. External links and references Grinker, Roy Richard & Steiner, Christopher B. (1997). Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History and Representation, pp. xvii-xxxi. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 1-55786-686-4. Rulers This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by fixing it. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.