We then pa.s.sed Grand Tabu (Tabou), in the middle of the bay formed by Point Tahou--a coast better known fifty years ago than it is now. The only white resident is Mr. Julio, who has led a rather accidented life. A native of St. Helena, he fought for the Northerners in the American war, and proved himself a first-rate rifle-shot. He traded on the Congo, and travelled like a native far in the interior. Now he has married a wife from Cape Palmas, and is the leading man at Tabu.
This place, again, is a favourite labour-market. The return of the Krumen repeats the spectacles of Sinou, and war being here chronic, the canoe-men come off armed with guns, swords, and matchets. After a frightful storm of tongues, and much bustle but no work, the impatient steamer begins to waggle her screw; powder-kegs and dwarf boxes are tossed overboard, and every attention is bestowed upon them; whilst a boy or two is left behind, either to swim ash.o.r.e or to find a "watery grave."
Presently we sighted the bar and breakers that garnish the mouth of the Cavally (Anglice Cawally) River: the name is properly Cavallo, because it lies fourteen miles, riding-distance, from Cape Palmas. Here Bishop Payne had his head-quarters, and his branch missions extended sixty miles up-stream. On the left bank, some fifteen or sixteen miles from the _embochure_, resides the "Grand Devil," equivalent to the Great G.o.d, of Kruland. The place is described as a large caverned rock, where a mysterious "Suffing" (something) answers, through an interpreter, any questions in any tongue, even English, receiving, in return for the revelations, offerings of beads, leaf-tobacco, and cattle, which are mysteriously removed. The oracle is doubtless worked by some st.u.r.dy knave, a "demon-doctor," as the missionaries call him, who laughs at the beards of his implicitly-believing dupes. A tree growing near the stream represents "Lot"s wife"s pillar;" some sceptical and Voltairian black was punished for impious curiosity by being thus "translated." Skippers who treated their "boys" kindly were allowed, a score of years ago, to visit the place, and to join in the ceremonies, even as most of the Old Calabar traders now belong to the "Egbo mystery." But of late years a village called Hidya, with land on both banks, forbids pa.s.sage. Moreover, Krumen are not hospitable. Masters and men, cast ash.o.r.e upon a coast which they have visited for years to hire hands, are stripped, beaten, and even tortured by women as well as by men. The savages have evidently not learnt much by a century"s intercourse with Europeans.
Leaving Cavally, the last place where Kruboys can be shipped, we coasted along the fiery sands snowed over with surf and set in the glorious leek-green growth that distinguishes the old Ivory Coast. The great Gulf Stream which, bifurcating at the Azores, sweeps southwards with easting, now sets in our favour; it is, however, partly a wind-current, and here it often flows to the west even in winter. The ever-rolling seas off this "Bristol coast" are almost clear of reef and shoal, and the only storms are tornadoes, which rarely blow except from the land: from the ocean they are exceedingly dangerous. Such conditions probably suggested the Bristol barque trade, which still flourishes between Cape Palmas and Grand Ba.s.sam.
A modern remnant of the old Bristolian merchant-adventurers, it was established for slaving purposes during the last century by Mr. Henry King, maintained by his sons, Richard who hated men-of-war, and William who preferred science, and it is kept up by his grandsons for legitimate trade.
The ships--barques and brigs--numbering about twenty-five, are neat, clean, trim craft, no longer coppered perpendicularly [Footnote: Still occurs sometimes: the idea is that as they roll more than they sail less strain is brought on the seams of the copper.] instead of horizontally after the older fashion. Skippers and crews are well paid for the voyage, which lasts from a year to fifteen months. The floating warehouses anchor off the coast where it lacks factories, and pick up the waifs and strays of cam-wood, palm-oil, and kernels, the peculiar export of the Gold Coast: at times a tusk or a little gold-dust finds its way on board. The trader must be careful in buying the latter. Not only have the negroes falsified it since the days of Bosnian, but now it is made in Birmingham. This false dust resists nitric acid, yet is easily told by weight and bulk; it blows away too with the breath, whilst the true does not. Again, the skippers have to beware of "fetish gold," mostly in the shape of broken-up ornaments of inferior ley.
The Bristolians preserve the old "round trade," and barter native produce against cloth and beads, rum and gin, salt, tobacco, and gunpowder. These ship-shops send home their exports by the mail-steamers, and vary their monotonous days by visits on board. They sail home when the cargoes are sold, each vessel making up her own accounts and leaving "trust," but no debts. The life must be like making one"s home in a lighthouse, plus an eternal roll; and the line gives a weary time to the mail-steamers, as these never know exactly where the Bristol barques will be found.
After hugging the coast and prospecting Biribi, we sighted the Drewins, whose natives are a powerful and spirited race, equally accustomed to either element. There are no better canoe-men on the coast. They ship only on board the Bristol ships, and they have more than once flogged a cruel skipper caught ash.o.r.e. Pa.s.sing King George"s Town, we halted (11 A.M., January 23) opposite the river and settlement of Fresco, where two barques and a cutter were awaiting supplies. Fresco-land is beautified by perpendicular red cliffs, and the fine broad beach is feathered with cocoas which suggest _kopra_--the dried meat of the split kernel. At 3.15 P.M. came Grand Lahou--Bosman"s Cabo La Hoe--180 miles from Cape Palmas.
The native settlements of nut-brown huts in the clearings of thick forests resemble heaps of withered leaves. The French have re-occupied a fort twenty miles up the pretty barless river, the outlet of a great lagoon; it was abandoned during the Prusso-Gallic war. Nine Bristol barques were lying off Three Towns, a place not upon the chart, and at Half-Jack, 205 miles from the Cape. Here we anch.o.r.ed and rolled heavily through the night, a regular seesaw of head and heels. Seamen have prejudices about ships, p.r.o.nouncing some steady and others "uncommon lively." I find them under most circ.u.mstances "much of a muchness."
The next morning carried us forty miles along the Ba.s.sam country and villages, Little, Piccaninny, and Great, to Grand Ba.s.sam. It is a regular lagoon-land, whose pretty rivers are the outlets of the several sweet waters and the salt-ponds. Opposite Piccaninny Ba.s.sam heads, with its stalk to the sh.o.r.e and spreading out a huge funnel eastward and westward, the curious formation known as the "Bottomless Pit." The chart shows a dot, a line, and 200 fathoms. In these days of deep-sea soundings I would recommend it to the notice of the Hydrographic Office. We know exactly as much about it in A.D. 1882 as in A.D. 1670, when Ogilvy wrote, "Six miles beyond Jak, in Jakko, [Footnote: Bosman"s _Jaqui-Jaqui_] is the _Bottomless Pit_, so called from its unfathomable deepness, for the seamen, having Sounded with their longest Lines and Plummets, could never reach the bottom." It would be interesting to know whether it is an area of subsidence or a volcanic depression. The adjacent Gold Coast suffers from terrible earthquakes, as Accra learnt to her cost in 1862.
At 10 A.M. we made Grand Ba.s.sam, where the French have had a _Residence_ for many years. Here the famous Ma.r.s.eille house of Regis Freres first made fortune by gold-barter. The precious ore, bought by the middlemen, a peculiar race, from the wild tribes of the far interior, appears in the shape of dust with an occasional small nugget; the traders dislike bars and ingots, because they are generally half copper. We have now everywhere traced the trade from Gambia to the Gold Coast, and we may fairly conclude that all the metal comes from a single chain of Ghauts subtending the maritime region.
Grand Ba.s.sam is included in the French _Cote d"Or_, but not in the English Gold Coast, which begins east of the Ivory Coast. The Dutch was even narrower, according to Bosnian: "Being a part of Guinea, it is extended about sixty miles, beginning with the Gold River (a.s.sini) twelve miles above Axim, and ending with Ponni, seven or eight miles east of Accra."
Grand Ba.s.sam has only two European establishments. Eastward lies the "Blockhouse" of M. Verdier, "agent of the Government at a.s.sini," so called from its battlemented roof. It is the old Fort Nemours, built in 1843. The "Poste," abandoned during the war of 1870, was let to Messieurs Swanzy; it is a series of ridge-roofs surrounded by a whitewashed stockade. Both have been freely accused of supplying the Ashantis with arms and ammunition during the last war. Similarly the Gambia is said to have supported the revolteds of Senegal. The site is vile, liable to be flooded by sea and rain. The River Akbu or Komo (Comoe), with its spiteful little bar, drains the realms of Amatifu, King of a.s.sini. It admits small craft, and we see the masts of a schooner amid the trees. The outlet of immense lagoons to the east and west, it winds down behind the factories, and bears the native town upon its banks. Here we discharged only trade-gin, every second surf-boat and canoe upsetting; the red cases piled upon the beach looked like a bed of rose-buds. The whole of this coast, as far as Axim, is so dangerous that men land with their lives in their hands. They disembark when outward-bound and re-embark when homeward-bound, and in the interim they never tempt surf and sharks.
The _Senegal_ left Grand Ba.s.sam at 5.30 P.M., to cover the eighty-five miles separating us from our destination. The next important feature is the a.s.sini River, also the outlet of enormous navigable lagoons, breaking the continuity of forest-backed sands. It lies fourteen to fifteen miles (which the chart has diminished to seven) west of the French settlement, of old Fort Joinville. The latter shows a tiled and whitewashed establishment, the property of M. Verdier, outlying the normal ant-hill of brown huts. In 1868 Winwood Reade here found a _poste_ and stockade, a park of artillery, a commandant, a surgeon, and a detachment of _tirailleurs senegalais_ levied amongst the warlike Moslem tribes of Senegambia. Like Grand Ba.s.sam it was under the station admiral, who inspected the two once a year, and who periodically sent a gunboat to support French interests.
By night we pa.s.sed New Town, not on the charts, but famed for owning a fine gold placer north of the town-lagoon. After my departure from the coast it was inspected by Mr. Grant, who sent home specimens of bitumen taken from the wells. Then came the two a.s.sinis, eastern and western, both places of small present importance. The "a.s.sini Hills" of the chart lie to the north, not to the south of the Tando water; and by day one can easily distinguish their broken line, blue and tree-clad. The Franco-English frontier has been determined after a fashion. According to Mr. Stanford"s last map, [Footnote: Gold Coast, November 20, 1873. A foot-note tells us, "The whole coast belongs to the English, the French having withdrawn since 1870 from Grand Ba.s.sam and a.s.sini" (Winwood Reade). This is obsolete in 1882. The limits of Ashanti-land are immensely exaggerated by this map.]
the westernmost point was in west long. 2 55" (G.) Thus our territory begins between Great a.s.sini and New Town, the latter being included in the Protectorate. This position would reduce the old Gold Coast from 245 direct geographical miles of sh.o.r.e-line between the River a.s.sini (W. long.
3 23") and the Volta mouth (E. long. 0 42") to some 217 or 220 in round numbers. Inland the limit should be the Tando valley, but it has been fancifully traced north from the Eyhi lagoon, the receptacle of the Tando, on a meridian of W. long. 2 50" (G.) to a parallel of N. lat. 6 30", or ninety-eight miles from the coast about Axim (N. lat. 4 52"). Thence it bends east and south-east to the Ofim, or western fork of the Bosom Prah, and ascends the Prah proper, separating Ashanti-land (north) from Fanti-land (south).
It should be our object to acquire by purchase or treaty, or both, the whole territory subject to Grand Ba.s.sam and a.s.sini. The reasons may be gathered from the preceding pages.
By night we also pa.s.sed Cape Apollonia and its four hummocks, which are faintly visible from Axim. The name has nothing to do, I need hardly say, with Apollo or his feasts, the Apolloniae, nor has it any relationship with the admirable "Apollinaris water." It was given by the Portuguese from the saint [Footnote: Butler"s _Lives_ gives "S. Apollonia (not Appolonia, as the miners have it), v.m. February 9." This admirable old maid leaped into the fire prepared for her by the heathen populace of Alexandria when she refused to worship their "execrable divinity." There are also an Apollonius (March 5), "a zealous holy anchorite" of Egyptian Antinous; and Apollinaris, who about A.D. 376 began to "broach his heresy," denying in Christ a human soul.] who presided over the day of discovery. In the early half of the present century the King of Apollonia ruled the coast from the a.s.sini to the Ancobra Rivers; the English built a fort by permission at his head-quarters, and carried on a large trade in gold-dust. Meredith (1800) tells us that, when his Majesty deceased, some twenty men were sacrificed on every Sat.u.r.day till the "great customs" took place six months afterwards. The underlying idea was, doubtless, that of Dahome: the potentate must not go, like a "small boy," alone and unattended to the shadowy realm. The "African Cruiser" [Footnote: _Journal of an African Cruiser_, by an officer of the U.S. navy. Edited by Nathaniel Hawthorn. Aberdeen: Clark and Son, 1848.] speaks of the royal palace being sumptuously furnished in European style; of gold cups, pitchers, and plates, and of vast treasures in bullion. When the King died sixty victims were slain and buried with their liege lord; besides a knife, plate, and cup; swords, guns, cloths, and goods of various kinds.
The corpse, smeared with oil and powdered _cap-a-pie_ with gold-dust, looked like a statue of the n.o.ble ore.
As the _Senegal_ advanced under easy steam, we had no rolling off this roller-coast, and we greatly and regretfully enjoyed the glorious Harmatan weather, so soon about to cease. The mornings and evenings were cool and dewy, and the pale, round-faced sun seemed to look down upon us through an honest northern fog. There was no heat even during the afternoons, usually so close and oppressive in this section of the tropics. I only wished that those who marvelled at my preferring to the bl.u.s.tering, boisterous weather of the Northern Adriatic the genial and congenial climate of West Africa could have pa.s.sed a day with me.
CHAPTER XV.
AXIM, THE GOLD PORT OF THE PAST AND THE FUTURE.
All the traveller"s anxiety about the Known and apprehensions of the Unknown fell from him like a garment as, after pa.s.sing the hummocks of Apollonia, his destination, Axim, [Footnote: The port lies in N. lat. 4 52" 20" (say 5 round numbers) and in W. long. (Gr.) 2 14" 45": it must not be confounded, as often occurs in England, with "Akim," the region north of Accra.] peeped up over the port-bow at dawn of the 25th of January.
The first aspect of Axim is charming; there is nothing more picturesque upon this coast.
After the gape of the Ancobra River the foresh.o.r.e gradually bends for a few miles from a west-east to a north-south rhumb, and forms a bay within a bay. The larger is bounded north by Akromasi Point, the southern wall of the great stream; the bold foreland outlain with reefs and a rock like a headless sphinx, is known from afar, east and west, by its "one tree," a palm apparently double, the leader of a straggling row. On the south of the greater bay is Point Pepre, by the natives called Inkubun, or Cocoanut-Tree, from a neighbouring village; like the Akromasi foreland, it is black and menacing with its long projection of greenstone reefs, whose heads are hardly to be distinguished from the flotilla of fishing canoes.
The lesser bay, that of Axim proper, has for limits Pepre and the Bosomato promontory, a bulky tongue on whose summit is a thatched cottage.
The background of either bay is a n.o.ble forest, a wall of green, the items being often 150 feet high, with branchless white boles of eighty, perpendicularly striping the verdure. The regular sky-line--broken by tall knolls and clumps, whose limits are rivulet-courses and bosky dells; thrown up by refraction; flecked with shreds of heavy mist
That like a broken purpose waste in air;
and dappled with hanging mists, white as snow, and "sun-clouds," as the natives term the cottony nimbus--is easily mistaken, in the dim light of dawn, for a line of towering cliffs.
The sea at this hour is smooth as oil, except where ruffled by fish-shoals, and shows comparatively free, today at least, from the long Atlantic roll which lashes the flat coast east of Apollonia. Its selvage is fretted by green points, golden sands, and a red cove not unlike the crater-port of Clarence, Fernando Po. The surface is broken by two islets, apparently the terminal k.n.o.bs of many reefs which project westward from the land. To the north rises Asiniba ("Son of Asini"), a pyramid of rock below and tree-growth above. Fronting the landing-place is Bobowusua, [Footnote: The Hyd. Chart calls them Suaba and Bobowa.s.si; it might be a trifle more curious in the matter of significant words.] or Fetish Island, a double feature which we shall presently inspect. The foresh.o.r.e is barred and dotted perpendicularly by black reefs and scattered _diabolitos_, or detached hard-heads, which break the surges. At spring-tides, when rise and fall reach at least ten feet, and fourteen in the equinoctial ebb and flow, it appears a gridiron of grim black stone. [Footnote: Not as the Hyd. Chart says--"rise and fall at springs six or seven feet."]
The settlement, backed by its grand "bush" and faced by the sea, consists of a castle and a subject town; it wears, in fact, a baronial and old-world look. Fort Santo Antonio, a tall white house upon a bastioned terrace, crowns proudly enough a k.n.o.b of black rock and low green growth.
On both sides of it, north and south, stretches the town; from this distance it appears a straggle of brown thatched huts and hovels, enlivened here and there by some whitewashed establishments, mining or "in the mercanteel." The soil is ruddy and rusty, and we have the usual African tricolor.
The agents of the several Aximite houses came on board. We drained the normal stirrup-cup and embarked in the usual heavy surf-boat, manned by a dozen leathery-lunged "Elmina boys" with paddles, and a helmsman with an oar. There are smaller surf-canoes, that have weather-boards at the bow to fend off the waves. Our anchorage-place lies at least two miles south-west-and-by-south of the landing-place. There is absolutely nothing to prevent steamers running in except a sunken reef, the Pinnacle or Hoeven Rock. It is well known to every canoeman. Cameron sounded for it, and a buoy had been laid by fishermen, but so unskilfully that the surge presently made a clean sweep. Hence a wilful waste of time and work. I wrote to Messieurs Elder and Dempster, advising them to replace it for their own interests and for the convenience of travellers; but in Africa one is out of the world, and receiving answers is emphatically not the rule.
There is no better landing-place than Axim upon this part of the African coast. The surf renders it impracticable only on the few days of the worst weather. We hugged the north of the Bobowusua rock-islet. When the water here breaks there is a clear way further north; the southern pa.s.sage, paved with rocks and shoals, can be used only when the seas are at their smoothest. A regular and well-defined channel placed us on the shingly and sandy beach. We had a succulent breakfast with Messieurs Gillett and Selby (Lintott and Spink), to whose unceasing kindness and hospitality we afterwards ran heavily in debt. There we bade adieu to our genial captain and our jovial fellow-travellers.
The afternoon was spent in visiting the Axim fort. Santo Antonio, built by the Portuguese in the glorious days of Dom Manuel (1495-1521), became the Hollander Saint Anthony by conquest in 1682, and was formally yielded by treaty to the Dutch West Indian Company. It came to us by convention at the Hague; and, marked "ruined" in the chart, it was repaired in 1873 before the Ashanti war. It can now act harbour of refuge, and is safe from the whole power of the little black despotism. Bosman [Footnote: _Eerste Brief_, 1737: the original Dutch edition was lent to me by M. Paulus Dahse.] shows "Fort St. Antonio" protected by two landward bastions and an old doorway opening upon a loopholed courtyard. Barbot (1700) sketches a brick house in gable-shape, based upon a triangular rock.
Pa.s.sing the Swanzy establishment, a model board-house, with masonry posts, a verandah all round, and a flying roof of corrugated iron, we ascend the old paved ramp. Here we remark that the castle-gateway of the Dutch, leading to the outer or slave court, has been replaced by a mean hole in the wall. The external work was demolished, lest the enemy effect a lodgement there. We can walk seawards round the green k.n.o.b scattered with black boulders, and pick an excellent salad, a kind of African dandelion, which the carnivorous English miners called "gra.s.s,"--with a big, big D.
Entering the hole in the wall, and pa.s.sing through a solid arched gateway and across a small court upon which the prison opens, we ascend the steps leading to the upper work. This is a large square house, pierced in front for one door and three windows, and connected by a bridge, formerly a drawbridge, with the two tall belvideres, once towers guarding the eastern entrance. The body is occupied by the palaver-hall of the _opper koopman_ (chief factor), now converted into a court-house and a small armoury of sniders. It leads to the bedrooms, disposed on three sides. The materials are trap, quartz, probably gold-bearing, and fine bricks, evidently home-made. The substantial quarters fronting the sea are breezy, comfortable, and healthy; and the large cistern contains the only good drinking-water in Axim. Life must be somewhat dull here, but, after all, not so bad as in many an out-station of British India. The chief grievance is that the inmates, the District-commissioner and his medico, are mere birds of pa.s.sage; they are ordered off and exchanged, at the will of head-quarters, often before they can settle down, and always before they learn to take interest in the place. The works consist of two bastions on the land side; a large one to the south-east, and a smaller to the north-east. Seawards projects a rounded cavalier, fronted by dead ground, or rather water. In the days of the Dutch the platforms carried "22 iron guns, besides some patteraroes." Now there are two old bronze guns, two "chambeis" bearing the mark "La Hague," and an ancient iron tube dismounted: a seven-pounder mountain-gun, of a type now obsolete, lurks in the shadows of the arched gateway. I afterwards had an opportunity of seeing the ammunition, and was much struck by a tub of black mud, which they told me was gunpowder. The Ashantis at least keep theirs dry.
The dispensary appeared equally well found. For some weeks there was a native a.s.sistant; then Dr. Roulston came, and, after a few days, was ordered off at a moment"s notice to the remotest possible station. He had no laudanum, no Dover"s powders, no chlorodyne, no Warburg; and, when treating M. Dahse for a burst vein, he was compelled to borrow styptics from our store. This style of economy is very expensive. To state the case simply, officials last one year instead of two.
The late Captain P. D. O"Brien, District-commissioner of Axim, did the honours, showing us the only "antiquity" in the place, the tomb of a Dutch governor, with a rudely cut inscription set in the eastern wall:--
WILLEM SCHOORWAS COMAD. OP AXEM 1659.
Amongst the slave-garrison of twenty-five Hausas I found a Wadai-man, Sergeant Abba Osman, who had not quite forgotten his Arabic. Several Moslems also appeared about the town, showing that the flood of El-Islam is fast setting this way. They might profitably be hired as an armed escort into the pagan interior.
Axim, preferably written by the Portuguese "Axem," was by them p.r.o.nounced Ashim or Ashem: no stress, therefore, must be laid upon its paper-resemblance with Abyssinian Axum. [Footnote: I allude to _The Guinea or Gold Coast of Africa, formerly a Colony of the Axumites_ (London, Pottle and Son, 1880), an interesting pamphlet kindly forwarded to me by the author, Captain George Peac.o.c.k. I believe, as he does, that the West Coast of Africa preserves traces of an ancient connection with the Nile valley and the eastern regions; but this is not one of them.] Barbot calls it "Axim, or Atzyn, or Achen." The native name is Essim, which, in the language of the Mfantse or Mfantse-fo (Fanti-race), means "you told me,"
and in the Apollonian dialect "you know me." These fanciful terms are common, and they allude to some tale or legend which is forgotten in course of time. The date of its building is utterly unknown. The Fanti tradition is that their race was driven coastwards, like their kinsmen the Ashantis, [Footnote: In _Wanderings in West Africa_, (ii. 98) I have given the popular derivation of Fanti (Fan-didi = herb-eater) and Asyanti (San-didi = corn-eater). Bowdich wrote "Ashanti" because he learnt the word from the Accra-men.] by tribes pressing down upon them from the north. They must have found the maritime lands occupied, but they have preserved no notices of their predecessors. The port-town became the capital of an upper factor, who ruled the whole coast as far as Elmina. It was almost depopulated, say the old authorities, by long wars with the more powerful Apollonia; but its commanding position has always enabled it to recover from the heaviest blows. It is still the threshold of the western Gold-region, and the princ.i.p.al port of occidental Wasa (Wa.s.saw).
We may fairly predict a future for Axim. The town is well situated to catch the sea-breeze. The climate is equatorial, but exceptionally healthy, save after the rainy season, which here opens a month or six weeks earlier than on the leeward coast. The downfall must, however, have diminished since the times when "the _blacks_ will tell you the wet weather lasts eleven months and twenty-nine days in the year." The rains now begin with April and end in September. The position is south of the thermal equator (22 R. = 81 5 F.), which runs north lat. 6 on the western coast, 15 in the interior, and 10 on the eastern seaboard.
[Footnote: Berghaus, following Humboldt, places the probable equator of temperature (80 16") in N. lat. 4, or south of Axim, rising to N. lat.
13 in Central and in Eastern Africa] Add that the average daily temperature is 75-80 (F.), rising to 96 in the afternoon and falling after midnight to 70, and that the wet season on the seaboard is perhaps the least sickly. We were there in January-March, during an unusually hot and dry season, following the Harmatan and the Smokes and preceding the tornadoes and the rains; yet I never felt an oppressive day,--nothing worse than Alexandria or Trieste in early August. The mornings and evenings were mostly misty; the moons were clear and the nights were tolerable. An excessive damp, which mildews and decays everything--clothes, books, metals, man--was the main discomfort. But we were living, as it were, in the open, and we neglected morning and evening fires. This will not be the case when solid and comfortable houses shall be built. The improvement of lodging and diet accounts for the better health of Anglo-Africans, as of Anglo-Indians, in the present day. Our predecessors during the early nineteenth century died of bad shelter, bad food, and bad drink.
The town, built upon a flat partly formed by cutting away the mounds and hillocks of red clay, was well laid out by Mr. Sam, the District-commissioner, after its bombardment during the Ashanti war. The main streets, or rather roads, running north-south, are avenued with shady Ganian or umbrella figs. I should prefer the bread-tree, which here flourishes. These thoroughfares are kept clean enough, and nuisances are punished, as in England. Cross lines, however, are wanted; the crooked pa.s.sages between the huts do not admit the sea-breeze. Native hovels, also, should be removed from the foresh.o.r.e, which, as Admiralty property, ought to be kept for public purposes. The native dwellings are composed of split bamboo-fronds (_Raphia vinifera_), thatched with the foliage of the same tree. They are mere baskets--airy, and perhaps too airy. Some are defended against wind and wet by facings of red swish; a few, like that of the "king" and chief native traders, are built of adobes (sun-dried bricks), whitewashed outside. Of this kind, too, are the stores and the mining establishments; the "Akankon House," near the landing-place; the "Gold Coast House," in the interior; the Methodist chapel, a barn-shaped affair; the Effuenta House to the north, and the Takwa, or French House, to the south.
"Sanitation," however, is loudly called for; and if cholera come here it will do damage. The southern part of the narrow ledge bearing the town, and including the French establishment, is poisoned by a fetid, stagnant pool, full of sirens, shrimps, and anthropophagous crabs, which after heavy rains cuts a way through its sand-bar to the sea. This _marigot_ is the "little shallow river Axim," the Achombene of Barbot, which the people call Awaminisu ("Ghost"s or Deadman"s Water"). To the north also there are two foul nullahs, the Eswa and the Besaon, which make the neighbourhood pestilential. In days to come the latter will be restored to its old course east of the town and thrown into the Awaminisu, whose mouth will be kept open throughout the year. The eastern suburbs, so to call them, want clearing of offal and all manner of impurities. Beyond the original valley of the Besaon the ground rises and bears the wall of trees seen from the offing. There is, therefore, plenty of building-room, and long heads have bought up all the land in that direction. Mr. Macarthy, of the School of Mines, owns many concessions in this part of the country.
All the evils here noted can easily be remedied. As in the Cairo of Mohammed Ali"s day, every house-holder should be made responsible for the cleanliness of his surroundings. The Castle-prison, too, rarely lodges fewer than a dozen convicts. These men should be taken away from "shot-drill" and other absurdities of the tread-mill type, which diversify pleasant, friar-like lives of eating and drinking, smoking, sleeping, and chatting with one another. Unfortunately, humanitarianism does not allow the lash without reference to head-quarters. Labour must therefore be light; still it would suffice to dig up the boulders from the main thoroughfares, to clean the suburbs, and to open the mouths of the fetid and poisonous lagoons.
Mr. William M. Grant, the clever and active agent of our friend Mr. James Irvine, came on board to receive us, and housed us and our innumerable belongings in his little bungalow facing "Water Street." We found life at Axim pleasant enough. Even in these days of comparative barbarism, or at best of incipient civilisation, the station is not wholly desert. The agents of the several firms are hospitable in the extreme. Generally also a manager of the inner mines, or a new comer, enlarges the small circle.
There is a flavour of England in "A. B. and Co., licensed dealers in wine and spirits, wholesale and retail," inscribed upon boards over the merchants" doors; also in the lawn-tennis, which I have seen played in a s.p.a.ce called by courtesy a square: Cameron, by-the-bye, has hired it, despite some vexatious local opposition, and it will be a fine _locale_ for the Axim Hotel now being opened. Sunday is known as a twenty-four hours of general idleness and revelry: your African Christian is meticulous upon the subject of "Sabbath;" he will do as little work as possible for six days, and scrupulously repose upon the seventh. Whether he "keeps it holy" is quite another matter, into which I do not care to enquire. Service- and school-hours are announced by a manner of peripatetic belfry--a negroling walking about with a cracked m.u.f.fin-bell.
From the chapel, which adjoins some wattled huts, the parsonage, surges at times a prodigious volume of sound, the holloaing of hymns and the bellowing of anthems; and, between whiles, the sable congregation, ranged on benches and gazing out of the windows, "catches it "ot and strong" from the dark-faced Wesleyan missionary-schoolmaster.
We were never wearied of the "humours" of native Axim. The people are not Fantis, but Apollonians, somewhat differing in speech with the Oji; both languages, however, are mutually intelligible. [Footnote: Oji is also written Otschi, Tschi, Chwee, Twi, Tswi, Otyi, Tyi, or whatever German ingenuity can suggest. I can hardly explain why the late Keith Johnston (Africa) calls the linguistic family "Ewe" (Ewhe, or properly Whegbe), after a small section of the country, Dahome, Whydah, &c. He was probably led to it by the publications of the Bale and other German missions.] The men are the usual curious compound of credulity and distrust, hope and fatalism, energy and inaction, which make the negro so like the Irish character. But we must not expect too much from the denizens of African seaports, mostly fishermen who will act hammock-bearers, a race especially fond of Bacchus and worshippers of the "devil Venus." Perhaps a little too much license is allowed to them in the matter of noisy and drunken "native customs," palavers, and pow-wows. They rarely go about armed; if you see a gun you know that the bearer is a huntsman. They are easily commanded, and, despite their sympathies with Ashanti-land, they are not likely to play tricks since their town was bombarded. In the villages they are civil enough, baring the shoulders, like taking off the hat, when they meet their rulers. Theirs, also, is the great virtue of cleanliness; even when the mornings are coldest you see them bathing on the beach. They are never pinched for food, and they have high ideas of diet. "He lib all same Prince; he chop cow and sheep ebery day, and fowl and duck he be all same vegeta"l." They have poultry in quant.i.ties, especially capons, sheep with negro faces like the Persian, dwarf milch-goats of st.u.r.dy build, dark and dingy pigs, and cattle whose peculiarity it is to be either black or piebald. The latter are neat animals like the smallest Alderneys, with short horns, and backs flat as tables. There are almost as many bulls as there are cows, and they herd together without fighting. Being looked upon as capital, and an honour to the owner, they are never killed; and, although the udders of cows and goats are bursting with milk, they are never milked.
The women differ very little from their sisters of the Eastern Gold Coast.
You never see beauty beyond the _beaute du diable_ and the nave and piquant plainness which one admires in a pug-pup. The forms are unsupported, and the figure falls away at the hips. They retain the savage fashion of coiffure shown in Cameron"s "Across Africa," training their wool to bunches, tufts, and horns. The latter is the favourite; the pigtails, which stand stiff upright, and are whipped round like p.r.i.c.ks of tobacco, may number half a dozen: one, however, is the common style, and the size is said to be determined by a delicate consideration. Opposed to this is the highly civilised _atufu_, "kankey," or bussle, whose origin is disputed. Some say that it prevents the long cloth clinging to the lower limbs, others that it comes from a modest wish to conceal the forms; some make it a jockey-saddle for the baby, others a mere exaggeration of personal development, an attempt to make Aphrodite a Callipyge. I hold that it arose, in the mysterious hands of "Fashion," from the knot which secures the body-cloth, and which men wear in front or by the side.
Usually this bussle is a mere bundle of cloth; on dress occasions it is a pad or cushion. I had some trouble to buy the specimen, which Cameron exhibited in London.