To the Gold Coast for Gold

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;'