Buttressing the southern shore of the Rokel's débouchure is a dwarf Ghaut, a broken line of sea-subtending highlands, stretching south-south-east some eighteen miles from Cape Sá Leone to Cape Shilling. Inland of these heights the ground is low. The breadth of the peninsula is about twelve miles, which would give it an area of 300 square miles, larger than the Isle of Wight. There are, besides it, the Kwiah (Quiah) country, British Sherbro, an important annexation dated 1862; the Isles de Los, the Bananas, and a strip of land on the Bullom shore,—additions which more than treble the old extent.
The peninsula is distinctly volcanic, and subject to earthquakes: the seismic movement of 1858 extended to the Gold Coast, and was a precursor of the ruins of 1862. [Footnote: For the older earthquakes see Winterbottom, i, 34-5.] Its appearance, however, is rather that of a sandstone region, the effect of the laterite or volcanic mud which, in long past ages, has been poured over the plutonic ejections; and the softly rounded contours, with here and there a lumpy cone, a tongue of land, and a gentle depression, show the long-continued action of water and weather. This high background, which arrests the noxious vapours of the lowlands and of the Bullom shore, and which forbids a thorough draught, is the fons malorum, the grand cause of the fevers and malaria for which the land has an eternal ill fame. The 'Sultan' of the Ghauts is Regent Mountain, or Sugarloaf Peak, a kind of lumpy 'parrot's beak' which rises nearly 3,000 feet above sea-level: one rarely sees even its base. The trip to the summit occupies two days; and here wild coffee is said to flourish, as it does at Kwiah and other parts of the lowland. The 'Wazir' is Wilberforce, which supports sundry hamlets set in dense bush; and Leicester Cone, the lioness-hill, ranks third. The few reclaimed patches, set in natural shrubbery, are widely scattered: the pure, unsophisticated African is ever ashamed of putting hand to hoe or plough; and, where the virgin soil would grow almost everything, we cannot see a farm and nothing is rarer than a field. Firing the bush also has been unwisely allowed: hence the destruction of much valuable timber and produce; for instance, tallow-trees and saponaceous nut-trees, especially the Pentadesma butyracea, and the noble forest which once clothed the land from Sá Leone to the Niger.
Looking towards the Rokel River, we see the Fourah Bay and College, a large and handsome building, now terribly out of repair. This establishment, the 'Farran's House' of old maps, is well known to readers of propagandist works; it opened on February 18, 1828, with six pupils, one of whom was the 'boy Ajai,' now Bishop Crowther of the Niger territory. The Church Missionary Society has spent upon it a small treasury of money; at present it ranks as a manner of university, having been affiliated in May 1876 to that of Durham. Sealed papers are sent out from England, but perhaps the local examiners are easy distributors of B.A.s and so forth to the golden youth of Sá Leone. It is free to all, irrespective of religious denomination, a liberal concession which does it high honour. The academical twelve-month has three terms; and there are three scholarships, each worth 40l. per annum, open for competition every year. Not bad for a maximum of sixteen students, whose total is steadily diminishing. College evening-classes are held for the benefit of those who must work by day; and charges are exceedingly moderate, the admission fee being 10s. 6d. The Society proposes, they say, to give it up. It may be wanted half a century hence. [Footnote: An annual report is published. Those curious on the subject will consult it.]
West of Fourah College, and separated, longo intervallo, by an apparently unbroken bush, is Bishop's Court, where the Right Reverend lives as long as he can or will. Nearer the 'city' lies the deep little bight called Susan or Sawpit Bay. It is also known as Destruction Bay—a gloomy name—where ships caught carrying 'bales,' or 'dry goods,' or 'blackbirds,' were broken up. Twenty years ago traces of their ruins were still seen. Susan is now provided with a large factory: here 'factories' do not manufacture. A host of boats and dug-outs, a swarm of natives like black ants, a long wooden jetty, and some very tall houses denote the place where Messrs. Randall and Fisher store and sell their Kola-nuts. This astringent, the Gora of old writers (Sterculia acuminata), acts in Africa like the Brazilian Guaraná, the Kát (Catha edulis) of southern Arabia, the Betel-nut of Hindostan, and the opium of China, against which certain bigots, with all the presumption of utter ignorance, have been, and still are, waging an absurd war. Sá Leone exported 3,445l. worth of Kola-nuts in 1860; in 1870 10,400l.; and, in 1880, 24,422l. The demand therefore increases and will increase. [Footnote: Mr. Griffith says, 'The Mohammedans of Africa have a singular belief that if they die with a portion of this nut in their stomach their everlasting happiness is secured.' This must be some fanciful Christian tale. Amongst them, however, the red Kola, when sent to the stranger, denotes war, the white Kola peace.]
In Susan Bay there is a good coal-shed with a small supply for the use of the colonial steamer. A store of compressed coal is on the town-front and heaps used to lie about King Tom's Point. A hulk was proposed and refused. It is now intended to increase the quantity, for the benefit of future companies, especially the 'Castle Line,' which talks of sending their steamers to Sá Leone. I hope they will so do; more competition is much wanted. But the coal-depôt may prove dangerous. The mineral in the tropics produces by its exhalations fatal fevers, especially that exaggerated form of bilious-remittent popularly known as 'Yellow Jack.' It is certain that in places like West Indian St. Thomas the neighbourhood of the coal-sheds is more unhealthy, without apparent reason, than the sites removed from it.
And now we reach Freetown proper, which may be called Cathedral-Town or Jail-Town. At a distance the 'Liverpool' or 'London of West Africa,' as the lieges wildly entitle it, is not unpicturesque; but the style of beauty is that of a baronial castle on the Rhine with an unpensioned proprietor, ruinous and tumbledown. After Las Palmas and Santa Cruz it looks like a dingy belle who has seen better and younger days; and who, moreover, has forgotten her paint. She has suffered severely from the abolition of the export slave-trade, in whose palmy times she supplied many a squadron, and she will not be comforted for the loss.
The colours of the houses are various; plain white is rare, and the prevailing tints are the light-brick of the fresh laterite and the dark rusty ochre of the old. But all are the same in one point, the mildewed, cankered, gangrened aspect, contrasting so unfavourably with the whitewashed port-towns of the Arabs. The upper stories of wood-work based on masonry, the fronting piazzas or galleries, the huge plank-balconies, and the general use of shingle roofs—in fact, the quantity of tinder-timber, reminding one of olden Cairo, are real risks: some of the best houses have been destroyed by fire; and, as in Valparaiso and the flue-warmed castles of England, it is only a question of time when the inmates will be houseless. Thanks to the form of ground, the townlet is well laid out, with a gradual rake towards the bay. But there is no marine parade, and the remarkably uneven habitations crowd towards the water-front, like those of Eastern ports, thinning off and losing style inland. The best are placed to catch the 'Doctor,' or sea-breeze: here, as at Zanzibar, the temperature out of the wind becomes unendurable.
Freetown lies upon a gentle declivity, a slope of laterite and diluvium washed down from the higher levels. The ground is good for drainage, but the soft and friable soil readily absorbs the deluging torrents of rain, and as readily returns them to the air in the shape of noxious vapours. The shape is triangular. The apex is 'Tower Hill,' so named from a ruined martello, supposed to have been built by the Dutch, and till lately used for stores. The barracks, which lodge one of the West India regiments, are six large blocks crowning the hill-crest and girt with a low and loopholed wall. In winter, or rather in the December summer, the slopes are clad in fine golden stubbles, the only spectacle of the kind which this part of the coast affords. Though not more than four hundred feet or so above sea-level, the barracks are free from yellow fever; and in the years when the harbour-town has been almost depopulated the only fatal cases were those brought up from below. Moreover, the disease did not spread. The officers' quarters, with cool and lofty rooms, twenty feet high, are surrounded by shady and airy piazzas or verandahs, where the wind, when there is any, must find its way. For many years they had jalousies and half-windows instead of glass, which forced the inmates to sit in outer darkness during tornadoes and the Rains. The garrison, like the town, owes an eternal debt of gratitude to Governor J. Pope Henessy. Seeing the main want of Sá Leone, he canalised in 1872, with the good aid of Mr. Engineer Jenkins, a fine fountain rising below 'Heddle's Farm,' enabling the barracks to have a swimming-bath and the townsfolk to lay on, through smaller pipes, a fair supply of filtered water. For this alone he amply deserves a statue; but colonies, like republics, are rarely grateful.
The sea-front of the triangle, whose lowest houses are sprinkled by the wave-spray, is bounded on the east by Battery Point. It is a grassy flat with a few fine trees, and benches ever black with the native lounger. Here the regimental band plays on Wednesdays; an occasional circus pitches its tents, and 'beauty and fashion' flock to see and be seen. The many are on foot; the few use Bath-chairs or machilas, —fautenils hung to a pole. The only carriage in the place belongs to the Governor, and he lost no time in losing one of his horses. Riding is apparently unknown.
The Battery is the old Fort Falconbridge. A worm-eaten gun or two, far more dangerous to those in rear than to those in front, rises en barbette. The affair would fall in half an hour before the mildest of gunboats. Yet by fortifying three points at an expense of some 6,000£ to 8,000£ Sá Leone might be decently defended. The first is Lighthouse Point, along which ships entering and leaving perforce must run; the second would be King Tom's Point, flanking the harbour-front; and the third would be Johnson's Battery, where salutes are now fired, a work lying above Government House upon a spur of Barrack Hill. Needless to say all three would want the heaviest guns.