I lingered in Eduaprim; the charm of talking with a woman who found joy in making a home in the wilderness was not to be lightly foregone, and I only went when I remembered that it was the rainy season, the roads were bad, and Tarkwa was away over those forbidding hills.
And from Tarkwa I went up the line to Obuasi.
This railway line that runs from Sekondi to Kumasi, the capital of Ashanti, is a wonderful specimen of its class. Every day sees some improvement made, but, being a reasonable being, I cannot help wondering what sort of engineers laid it out. It presents no engineering difficulties, but it was extremely costly, and meanders round and round like a corkscrew. They are engaged now in straightening it, but still they say that when the guard wants a light for his pipe all he has to do is to lean out of his van and get it from the engine. It was laid through dense forest, but the forest is going rapidly, the trees being used up for fuel. In the early days, too, these trees were a menace, for again and again, when a fierce tornado swept across the land, the line would be blocked by fallen trees, a casualty that grows less and less frequent as the forest recedes. When first the line was opened they tell me all passengers were notified that they must bring food and bedding, as the company could not guarantee their being taken to their destination. There is also the story of the distracted but pious negro station-master, who telegraphed to headquarters, “Train lost, but by God's help hope to find it.” It is a single line of 168 miles, so I conclude his trust in the Deity was not misplaced.
Obuasi, on the borders of Ashanti, is the great mine of West Africa, a mine that pays, I think, something like 75 per cent, on its original shares, and even at their present value pays 12 per cent. It is enough to set everyone looking for gold in West Africa.
And like Prestea, Obuasi is the mine, and the mine only. There are, I think, between eighty and one hundred white men, all, save the few Government officials and storekeepers, in some way or another connected with the mine, and the place at night looks like a jewel set in the midst of the hills, for it is lighted by electricity. Every comfort of civilisation seems to be here, save and except the white woman, who is conspicuous by her absence. “We want no white women,” seems to be the general opinion; an opinion, I deeply regret to say, warranted by my experience of the average English woman who goes to West Africa.
The place is all hill and valley, European bungalows built on the hills, embowered generally in charming gardens such as one sees seldom in the Colony, and the native villages—for there are about five thousand black men on the books of the mine—in the valleys. There are miles of little tramway railways too, handling about 35,000 tons a month, more, they tell me, than the Government railway does, and the mine pays Government a royalty of £25,000 a year.
Obuasi is a fascinating, beautiful place; I should have liked to have spent a month there, but it is not savagery. It is as civilised in many ways as London itself. I stayed in the mining manager's bungalow, and am very grateful to him for his hospitality, and the manager's bungalow is a most palatial place, set on the top of a high hill in the midst of a beautiful garden. Palm and mango and grape-fruit trees, flamboyant, palms, dahlias, corallita, crotons, and roses, the most beautiful roses in the world, red, white, yellow, pink, everywhere; a perfect glory of roses is his garden, and the view from the verandah is delightful. His wide and spacious rooms are panelled with the most beautiful native woods, and looking at it with the eyes of a passer-by, I could see nothing but interest in the life of the man who had put in a year there. He will object strongly, I know, to my writing in praise of anything West-African, and say what can I know about it in a brief tour. True enough, what can I know? But at least I have seen many lands, and I am capable of making comparisons.