CHAPTER XXII. — TO INSIMANKÁO AND THE BUTABUÉ RAPIDS.
Leaving Axim on March 16, I slept at Kumprasi and remarked a great change in the bar of the Ancobra River. During the dry season it had been remarkably good, but now it began to change for the worse; and soon it will become impassable for three or four days at a time. My surf-boat, when coming across it, shipped three seas. On my return down the river (April 15) the whole sand-bank to the west of the mouth had been washed away, forming dangerous shoals; the sea was furiously breaking and 'burning,' as the old Dutch say, and the waves which entered the river were so high that canoes were broken and boats were seriously damaged.
I stored my goods in the surf-boat, and set out in our big canoe early next morning. A string of dug-outs was next passed, loaded with palm-kernels, maize, and bananas; it appeared as if they were all bound for the market at Axim. I took specimens of swish and stone from 'Ross's Hill.' The top soil showed good signs of gold, and the grains were tolerably coarse. Here a floating power-engine would soon bare the reefs and warp up the swamp. Messieurs Allan and Plisson, who were floating down in a surf-boat, gave me the news that the steam-launch Effuenta had at last succumbed in the struggle for life.
I landed at Akromási, a village where the true bamboo-cane grows, and found the soil to be a grey sandy clay; there were many 'women's washings' near the settlement. Shortly before reaching the Ahenia River we saw the landing-place for the valuable 'Apatim concession.' They told me on enquiry that the stream is deep and has been followed up in a surf-boat for a mile or two. It may therefore prove of use to Mr. Irvine's property, Apatim.
At half-past five that evening I reached Akankon, and slept well at 'Riverside House.' Mr. Morris had begun levelling the ground and building new quarters for general use. I gave him some slips of bamboo and roots of Bahama-grass, as that planted had grown so well.
Next morning we got under way early (6.50) and proceeded up the river. The canoe-men, seeing pots of palm-wine on the banks, insisted upon landing to slake their eternal thirst. The mode in which the liquor is sold shows a trustfulness on the part of the seller which may result from firm belief in his 'fetish.' Any passer-by can drink wine à discrétion, and is expected to put the price in a calabash standing hard by. Beyond the Yengéni River I saw for the first and only time purple clay-slate overlying quartz. Collecting here and there specimens of geology, and suffering much from the sun, for I still was slightly feverish, I reached the 'great central depôt' at 4 P.M.
Tumento was found by observation to lie in N. lat. 4º 12' 20" and in W. long. (Gr.) 2º 12' 25". Consequently it is only eighteen direct geographical miles from the sea, the mouth of the Ancobra being in W. lat. 2º 54'. Some make the distance thirty and others sixty miles. The latter figure would apply only by doubling the windings of the bed.
This ascent of the river convinced me more than ever that Enfrámadié is the proper terminus of its navigation. I passed the next day at Tumento, which proved to be only half the distance usually supposed along the Ancobra bed from its mouth. The time was spent mainly in resting and doctoring myself. At night the rats, holding high carnival, kept me awake till 3 A.M.; and I heard shots being continually fired from a native mine whose position was unknown. The natives now know how to bore and blast; consequently thefts of powder, drills, and fuses become every day more common. My first visit (March 20) was to the Insimankáo concession. I left the surf-boat behind, and put my luggage into small canoes hired at Tumento, myself proceeding in the large canoe. We shoved off from the beach at 8.50 A.M. The Ancobra had now, after the late rains, a fair current instead of being almost dead water; otherwise it maintained the same appearance. The banks are conglomerate, grey clay and slate; gravel, sand, shingle, and pebbles of reddish quartz, bedded in earth of the same colour, succeeding one another in ever-varying succession. Only two reefs, neither of them important, projected from the sides.
After an hour and a half paddling we reached the Fura, which I should call a creek; it is not out of the mangrove-region. The bed is set in high, steep banks submerged during the rains; and the narrowness of the mouth, compared with the upper part, made it run, after the late showers, into the Ancobra like a mill-race. In fact, the paddlers were compelled to track in order to make headway. After ten minutes (=200 yards) we reached a landing-place, all jungle with rotting vegetation below. I do not think that as a waterway the Fura Creek can be made of any practical use; but it will be very valuable for 'hydraulicking.' Canoes and small surf-boats may run down it at certain seasons, but the flow is too fast and the bed is too full of snags and sawyers to be easily ascended.
At the landing-place I mounted my hammock and struck the path which runs over level ground pretty thick with second-growth. The chief Bimfú, who met me at Tumento, had broken his promise to guide me, and had neglected to clear the way. On a largish creek which was nearly dry I saw a number of 'women's washings.' Then we passed on the right a hillock seventy to eighty feet high, where quartz showed in detached and weathered blocks. Beyond it were native shafts striking the auriferous drift at a depth of eight to ten feet. A few yards further on the usual washings showed that the top soil is also worth working.
Another half-hour brought us to about a dozen native shafts in the usual chimney shape. They were quite new and had been temporarily left on account of the rise of the water, which was here twenty-four feet below the surface. The top soil is of sandy clay, and the gold-containing drifts, varying in thickness, they told me, from two to four feet, consisted of quartz pebbles bedded in red loam. The general look of the stratum and the country suggested an old lagoon.
An hour and a half of hammock brought me from the landing-place of the Fura Creek to the village of Insimankáo. Rain was falling heavily and prevented all attempts at observation. The settlement is the usual group of swish and bamboo box-huts nestling in the bush. A small clean bird-cage, divided into two compartments, with standing bedstead, was assigned to me. Next morning I walked to the Insimankáo mine by a path leading along, and in places touching, the bank of the Fura Creek, which runs through the whole property. After thirty-three minutes we reached the 'marked tree.' Here the land begins to rise and forms the Insimankáo Hill, whose trend is to north-north-east. Mr. Walker calls it Etia-Kaah, or Echia-Karah, meaning 'when you hear (of its fame) you will come.' It is the usual mound of red clay, fairly wooded, and about 150 feet high; the creek runs about 100 yards west of the pits. The reefs seemed to be almost vertical, with a strike to the north-north-east; and the walls showed slate, iron-oxide, and decomposed quartz. The main reef [Footnote: Mr. O. Pegler (A.R.S.M.) describes it as a 'very powerful reef outcropping boldly from a hill at a short distance from the native village, the strike being north-north-east to south-south-west, and the vein having a great inclination. At the crest of the hill it presents a massive appearance, and is many feet in width—in some places between twenty and thirty feet. This diminishes towards the native pits, and there the vein diverges into two portions, both presenting a decomposed appearance, the casing on both foot and hanging wall having a highly talcose character.' This engineer also washed gold specks from the loose soil. Finally, he notes that the massive quartz-outcrop is homogeneous and crystalline, giving only traces of gold, but that the stone improves rapidly with depth.] was from eight to ten feet thick, and I believe that there are other and parallel formations. But the ground is very complicated, and for proper study I should have required borings and cross-cuts.
There were two big rough pits called shafts. I descended into the deeper one, which was fourteen to fifteen feet below ground. The walls would repay washing on a large scale; and the look of the top soil reminded me of the descriptions of old California and Australia when there were rushes of miners to the gold-fields, carrying for all machinery a pick, a pan, and a tin 'billy.'
The Insimankáo concession contains 1,000 fathoms square; the measurements being taken from a 'marked tree' on the north-western slope of the hill with the long name. The position is N. lat. 5º 18' 15" and the long. W. (Gr.) 2º 14' 03". West of the centre the Fura Creek receives a small tributary. Mr. Walker took fair samples from the well-defined reef and the outcropping boulders, whose strike is from north-north-east to south-south-west. He notes that the land Egwira, which lies between Wásá and Aowin, was long famous for its mining-industry, and that it appears in old maps as a 'Republick rich in gold.' We heard of the Abenje mine on the same reef, four to five miles east of Insimankáo; and he declares that it has been abandoned because the population is too scanty.
I left this mining property convinced that working it will pay well. The only thing to be guarded against is overlapping the French concession of Mankuma, which lies immediately to the east.
From the mine I walked back to the village, breakfasted, and returned in the canoes to the sluice-like mouth of the Fura Greek. I then ascended the Ancobra, in order to inspect the Butabué rapids, said to be the end of canoe-navigation. We passed on the right a reef and a shallow of conglomerate, washed out of the banks and forming a race; there is another reef with its rip at Aroásu. In the early part of the afternoon we got to the village of Ebiásu, which means 'not dark.' Here the equinoctial showers began to fall heavily, and I was again obliged to sleep without observations. The village is built upon a steep bank of yellow clay, with rich red oxides; it stands forty feet above the present level, and yet at times it is flooded out.
Leaving Ebiásu next morning, I found the banks of sand, clay, and small pebbles beginning to shelve. We passed over slaty rocks in the bed; and the depth of water was often not more than three feet. Women's washings were seen on the left bank, and the river had risen after they had been worked. We could not approach them on account of the reefs and the current. The opposite bank, about five minutes further up, is of soft sandstone; and here a native tunnel of forty to fifty feet had been run in from the river to communicate with a shaft. My men were nervous about leopards, and I had to encourage them by firing my rifle into the hole. The normal formation continued, and here the land is evidently built by the river; there are few hills, and the present direction of the bed has been determined by the rocks and reefs, the outliers of the old true coast. These features may have been lower than they are now, and owe their present elevation to upheaval. Immature conglomerate—that is, a pudding of pebbles and hardened clay—seems to have been deposited in the synclinal curve of the bed-rock, principally slate. Overlying both are the top soil and the sands, the latter often resembling the washed out tailings of stamped rock.
Passing the village Abanfokru, I found myself amongst the extensive concessions of the French, who have taken the alluvial grounds for washing and working. M. Bonnat's map gives the approximate positions and dimensions; and the several sites are laid down by M. Dahse. I shall have more to say about this section on my return.
Navigation now becomes more intricate and difficult, owing to rocks and reefs, rips and rapids. A large stony holm about mid-stream is called Eduásim, meaning 'thief in river.' I need not repeat from my map the names of the unimportant settlements. At the mouth of the Abonsá the bed widens to nearly double, and the north-easterly direction shifts to due north. This great drain, falling into the left bank, lies between five and six miles above the Fura Creek. I shall have more to say about it when describing my descent. Two miles further north brought us to the beginning of the rapids, which apparently end the boat-navigation. The only canoes are used for ferrying; I saw no water-traffic, and there were no longer any fish-weirs. Moreover, the country has been deserted, I was told, since the arrival of strangers. The natives have probably been treated with little consideration. A quarter of an hour's hauling, all hands being applied to the canoe, took us about fifty yards over the Impayim rapid, whose fall is from four to five feet deep. Immediately after the Butabué influent on the right bank the bed bends abruptly east, and we reached the far-famed rapids of that name. Here the whole surface, as far up as the eye can see, is a mass of rocks and of broken, surging water. The vegetation of the banks, bound together by creepers, llianas, and rattans, is peculiarly fine. I landed upon one of the rocks, sketched the Butabué, whose name none could explain, and returned down stream to the 'great central Depôt,' Tumento.
I can say little about the River Ancobra above the rapids, except that it resumes its course from the north-north-east and the north, apparently guided by the hills. The sources are now only a few miles distant, but the stream is unnavigable, and they must be reached on foot. The late M. Bonnat walked up by a hunter's path, now killed out, to the ruins of Bush Castle, which Jeekel calls Fort Ruyghaver. He there secured possession of the rich Asamán mines, which the work was intended to defend. There is some fetish there, and the place is known as the burial-ground of the kings. I was also told that four or five marches off a cache of treasure, described to be large, had been made during the Ashanti-Gyáman war, and had been defended by the usual superstitions. Fetish may have lost much of its power on the coast; in the interior, however, it is still strong, and few white men live long after being placed under its ban.