An excerpt of a description of Ghana through the eyes of a
Victorian British explorer,
Sir
Richard Burton most famous for translating The Arabian Nights into English,
during a visit in 1862.
TO THE GOLD COAST FOR GOLD, Volume 2
CHAPTER XIX.
TO PRINCE'S RIVER AND BACK.
On February 15 we proceeded down coast to inspect the
mining-lands of
Prince's River valley, east of Axim; and this time it was
resolved to
travel by surf-boat, ignoring that lazy rogue the
hammock-man. Yet even
here difficulties arose. Mast and sail were to be borrowed,
and paddles
were to be hired at the rate of a shilling a day each. They
are the life
of the fishing Aximites; yet they have not the energy to
make them, and
must buy those made in Elmina.
The eastern coast, like that of Apollonia, is a succession
of points and
bays, of cool-looking emerald jungle and of 'Afric's golden
sands' reeking
with unkindly heat. Passing the long black tongue of Prépré,
or Inkubun,
and the red projection, Ponta Terceira, we sighted the
important Ajámera
village, so called from a tree whose young leaves show a
tender
pinkish-red. On the Awazán Boppo Hill, about two miles from
the
trial-shaft of his concession, Dr. Ross found a native 'Long
Tom.' It was
a hollowed palm-trunk rotten with age, closed at one end and
open at the
other, with a slant downwards; two forks supported it over a
water-filled
hollow, measuring ten feet each way by three deep. Ajámera
lies a little
west of the peninsula, _Africanicè_ Madrektánah, a jutting
mass of naked
granite glazed red by sea-water: on either side of the sandy
neck, pinned
down, like Pirate's Bay, by cocoa-nuts, there is the safest
landing-place…
The chief of Prince's Town, Eshánchi, _alias_ 'Septimulus,'
a name showing
a succession of seven sons, not without a suspicion of
twins, would have
accompanied us up stream. Guinea-worm, however, forbade, and
he sent a
couple of guides, one of whom, Wafápa, _alias_ 'Barnabas,' a
stout, active
freedman of the village, proved very useful.
We resolved to shoot the banks going, and to collect
botanical specimens
on return. The land appears poor in mammals, rich in
avifauna, and
exceedingly abundant in insect life. Of larger animals there
are leopards,
cat o' mountains and civet-cats, wild hog and fine large
deer; we bought a
leg weighing 11-1/2 lbs., and it was excellent eating
seasoned with 'poor
man's quinine,' _alias_ garlic. Natives and strangers speak
of the
jungle-cow, probably the Nyaré antelope (_Bos brachyceros_) of
the Gaboon
regions, the _empacasso_ of the Portuguese. Two small black
squirrels,
scampering about a white-boled tree, were cunning enough
never to give a
shot. We sighted only small monkeys with white beards and
ruddy coats. 'He
be too clever for we,' said the Kruboys when the wary
mannikins hid in the
bush. I saw nothing of the _kontromfi_, cynocephalus or
dog-faced baboon,
concerning whose ferocity this part of Africa is full of
stories. Further
north there is a still larger anthropoid, which the natives
call a wild
man and Europeans a gorilla. The latter describe its
peculiar whoop, heard
in the early night when the sexes call to each other.
Our results were two species of kingfishers (_alcedo_), the
third and
larger kind not showing; a true curlew (_Numenius arquata_),
charming
little black swallows (_Wardenia nigrita_), the common
English swallow;
a hornbill (_buceros_), all feathers and no flesh; a lean
and lanky
diver (_plotus_), some lovely little honeysuckers, a red
oriole, a fine
vulture (_Gypohierax angolensis_), and a grand osprey
(_hali[oe]tus_),
which even in the agonies of death would not drop his prey.
Many other
birds were given over to Mr. Dawson, who worked from dawn
till dusk. Mr.
Grant dropped from the trees three snakes, one green and two
slaty-brown. The collection found its way to the British
Museum after
the usual extensive plunder, probably at a certain port,
where it is
said professional collectors keep customhouse-men in pay.
Mr. R. B.
Sharp was kind enough to name the birds, whose shrunken list
will be
found at the end of the volume.
Cameron, observing for his map, was surprised by the
windings of the bed;
we seemed ever within hearing of the sea. Where a holm of
rock and bush
splits the course its waters swarm with fish, as shown by
the weirs and
the baskets, large and small; some of its cat-fish
(_siluri_) weigh 10
lbs. Every shoal bred oysters in profusion, young mangroves
sprouted from
the submerged mollusk-beds, and the 'forests of the sea'
were peopled with
land-crabs.
At first the vegetation of the banks was almost wholly of
rhizophores,
white and red; the wood of the latter burns like coal, and
the bark is
admirable for tanning. In places their long suckers, growing
downwards to
the stream, resembled a cordwainer's walk set on end. A bush
of
yellow-flowered hibiscus clothes the banks that are less
level; and,
higher still, grows a tall and beautiful mimosa with
feathery web and
pendent pods of brightest green and yellow. Then came the
brabs and palms,
fan-, cocoa-, oil-, and bamboo-, with their trunks turned to
nurseries of
epiphytes and air-plants. The parasites are clematis and a
host with hard
botanical names.
Towards evening, as the stream narrowed, the spectacle was
imposing. The
avenues and trees stood up like walls, but living walls; and
in places
their billowy bulges seemed about to burst upon us like
Cape-rollers.
Every contrast was there of light and dark, short and tall,
thick and
thin; of age and death with lusty youth clinging around it;
of the cocoa's
drooping frond and the aspiring arm of bombax, the
silk-cotton-tree, which
rains brown gossamer when the wind blows; of the sloth-tree
with its
topping tuft, and the tangled mantle of the calamus or
rattan, a palm like
a bamboo-cane. The bristly pod of the dolichos (_pruriens_)
hangs by the
side of the leguminosæ, from whose flattened,
chestnut-coloured seeds
snuff-boxes are made further east. It was also a _floresta
florida_, whose
giants are decked with the tender little blossoms of the
shrub, and where
the bright bracts and yellow greens of this year's growth
light up the
sombre verdure of an older date. The type of this growth is
the red
camwood-tree, with its white flower of the sweetest savour.
Imagine an
English elm studded with pinks or daisies, gardenias or
hyacinths. There
is nothing more picturesque than the shiftings and changes
of aspect upon
these African streams, which at first seem so monotonous.
After dawn the
smoking water, feeling tepid to the hand and warmer than the
atmosphere,
veils the lower levels and makes the forest look as if based
on air. Noon
brings out every variety of distance with startling
distinctness, and
night, especially moonlit night, blurs with its mists long
tracts of
forest, rains silver over the ridges, and leaves the hollows
in the
blackest shade. Seen from above, the sea of trees looks like
green water
raised to waves by the wind, and the rustling in the breeze
mimics the
sound of distant surf.
A catamaran of four cork-trees, a cranky canoe, the
landing-place of a
bush-road, a banana-plantation, and a dwarf clearing, where
sat a family
boiling down palm-nuts for oil, proved that here and there
the lowland did
not lack lowlanders. The people stared at us without
surprise, although
this was only the fourth time they had seen a surf-boat. The
river-bed,
grid-ironed with rocky reefs, showed us twenty-two turns in
a few miles;
some were horseshoe-bends, sweeping clean round to the
south, and one
described a curve of 170º. After slow and interrupted
paddling for an hour
and a half, at 6 P.M., when night neared, we halted at the
village of
Esubeyah, or 'Water-made;'
