Nigh six months had passed, and it was now time for me to go and meet Richard at Liverpool, so I left the 18th of April, spending a few happy days in Vienna, thence to Paris and Boulogne, where I found a howling tempest. Two houses had been destroyed, a steamer was signalling distress, and the Hôtel Impérial Pavilion had to open its back door to let me in, the gale being too strong in front. I had brought a Trieste girl with me as maid, whose class or race did not admit of the wearing of hat or bonnet. They wanted to turn me out of the church at Boulogne, because the girl was bareheaded, and I had to explain that nothing would induce her to wear one for fear of losing caste. I got off in a very bad sea two days later, and to London on the 3rd of May.
On the 15th I went up to Liverpool. Richard and Captain Cameron arrived in the African mail Loanda on the 20th, and there was a great dinner that night, given by the Liverpudlians to welcome them back. It was a great success, and they were all very merry. On the 22nd we came up to London, but no sooner did we arrive there, than Richard was taken quite ill and had to go to bed. He was to have lectured at the Society of Arts, but he could not, which was an awful disappointment to them and to us; but he soon got well under home care, and he lectured on the 31st at the Anthropological.
He notices in his journal the death of the poet and artist, Gabriel Rossetti, on the 10th of April, and Darwin's death on the 19th. We were immediately occupied in bringing out "To the Gold Coast for Gold" (2 vols,), where he gives an account of the different places to which he and Captain Cameron went, the chief place being Axim, on the Guinea coast. There were two obstacles which were deemed fatal to success. One was Ashantee obstruction, and the other was the expense of transporting machinery and working still labour in a wild country, a lack of hands, and the climate; but they were only bugbears. "He knew nothing to equal it as to wealth, either in California or in Brazil. Gold dust was panned by native women from the sands of the seashore, gold spangles glittered after showers in the streets of Axim; their washings weighed from half an ounce to four ounces per ton. The gold is there, and it is our fault if it stays there. We have in our hands the best of workmen—the tireless machine, the steam navvy, and the quartz stamp; and those called 'Long Tom' and 'Broad Tom' would do more work in a day than a whole gang of negroes."
He says that in the last century the Gold Coast exported to Europe three and a half millions of sterling gold, but the abolition of slavery and manumissions brought it down to £126,000 value. A few years ago England's annual supply was £25,000,000, and was then (1882) £18,000,000. England wants gold, and he says that the Gold Coast can supply it to any amount that England may want. There was a threatened action a while ago about the way the moneys were supplied for the carrying out of these mines, called the Guinea Coast Trial. My husband was not employed to take charge, or to work there, and nearly all who were sent out (with one or two notable exceptions) thought more of feathering their own nests, even for a couple of years, than of the public good; hence the thing failed, but will live again.
My husband was passionately fond of mining for the sake of developing the resources of any country in which he travelled and made discoveries. I was always sorry when he got on the mine track, because he always ended in one way. Shady people, partially or wholly dishonest, would praise up his knowledge to the skies. They would sometimes go so far as to send him to the spot, to draw up a report of such or such a mine; with written (legal) agreements contracting to pay him perhaps £2000 or more for his report, his expenses paid, and shares in the mine. As soon as they got his report, they would ask him to come home, and send some one else to run the mine down. Nevertheless they made their own money out of it. I always trembled, but I always helped him all I could whenever any of these grand money plans were on hand, because it interested him; and I keep and leave to my heirs all the correspondence and agreements concerning them, as well as other matters of business.
He did his work in his simple, gentlemanly, scientific way, fully knowing the worth of the mine, but nothing about business. Then, as soon as they had got all his secrets and information from him, they would send their own agent, who in one case pretended that he could not find the spot, purposely avoiding to take the guide Richard had commissioned for the purpose. But the chief speculator did find them, and sell them too, although Richard never got a penny for his trouble. He never knew how to get himself paid without going to law, which they knew was undesirable for a Consul, and, so far from getting anything, very often he was largely out of pocket. He was very much out of pocket about the Guinea Coast Mines, and, had the trial threatened by Mr. Johns come off, I should have asked to have been subpœnaed, as my husband was dead, and I should have produced all the papers and his depositions written before his death, and asked to be refunded his losses. In the Khedivial Mines of Midian he dropped much money in expenses, which Ismail Khedive was to have paid him back, but never did. However, this last only resulted from the accident of abdication, and not with intent to hurt him. The others were men that he ought never to have pitted himself against; that is, pitted the straightforward, unsuspecting ignorance of a gentleman against men who have been bred for generations to know how much percentage they can get out of the fraction of a farthing.
I purposely omit names, as I do not care to hurt anybody unless necessary. These very mines, which I believe Mr. Johns and his Board have been depreciating so much, have been bought by a man who knew the gold mine well, and because of its wealth has acquired it from the natives. He says (1893), "Ever since it was ruined by the weakness of the directors in London, and the utter incapacity or worse of the managers on the Guinea Coast, the natives themselves have been mining it and getting lots of gold out of it, and the writer has just bought it up again." The thing became a failure entirely through incapacity and dishonesty abroad, as will be proved by the success of the mine in proper hands. I had at one time several lumps of quartz with bits of gold sticking out of it, which Richard picked up himself on the property.
About eight weeks before Richard died, he dictated a paper to me, and left papers in my hands which thoroughly prove that he had lost instead of receiving, and that what he did receive was demanded back again; and though not obliged, he did pay it, even his own expenses going out and coming home to make the reports for their benefit, for which he was promised such good payment.[2]