There is no better landing-place than Axim upon this part of the African coast. The surf renders it impracticable only on the few days of the worst weather. We hugged the north of the Bobowusúa rock-islet. When the water here breaks there is a clear way further north; the southern passage, paved with rocks and shoals, can be used only when the seas are at their smoothest. A regular and well-defined channel placed us on the shingly and sandy beach. We had a succulent breakfast with Messieurs Gillett and Selby (Lintott and Spink), to whose unceasing kindness and hospitality we afterwards ran heavily in debt. There we bade adieu to our genial captain and our jovial fellow-travellers.
The afternoon was spent in visiting the Axim fort. Santo Antonio, built by the Portuguese in the glorious days of Dom Manuel (1495-1521), became the Hollander Saint Anthony by conquest in 1682, and was formally yielded by treaty to the Dutch West Indian Company. It came to us by convention at the Hague; and, marked 'ruined' in the chart, it was repaired in 1873 before the Ashanti war. It can now act harbour of refuge, and is safe from the whole power of the little black despotism. Bosman [Footnote: Eerste Brief, 1737: the original Dutch edition was lent to me by M. Paulus Dahse.] shows 'Fort St. Antonio' protected by two landward bastions and an old doorway opening upon a loopholed courtyard. Barbot (1700) sketches a brick house in gable-shape, based upon a triangular rock.
Passing the Swanzy establishment, a model board-house, with masonry posts, a verandah all round, and a flying roof of corrugated iron, we ascend the old paved ramp. Here we remark that the castle-gateway of the Dutch, leading to the outer or slave court, has been replaced by a mean hole in the wall. The external work was demolished, lest the enemy effect a lodgement there. We can walk seawards round the green knob scattered with black boulders, and pick an excellent salad, a kind of African dandelion, which the carnivorous English miners called 'grass,'—with a big, big D. Entering the hole in the wall, and passing through a solid arched gateway and across a small court upon which the prison opens, we ascend the steps leading to the upper work. This is a large square house, pierced in front for one door and three windows, and connected by a bridge, formerly a drawbridge, with the two tall belvideres, once towers guarding the eastern entrance. The body is occupied by the palaver-hall of the opper koopman (chief factor), now converted into a court-house and a small armoury of sniders. It leads to the bedrooms, disposed on three sides. The materials are trap, quartz, probably gold-bearing, and fine bricks, evidently home-made. The substantial quarters fronting the sea are breezy, comfortable, and healthy; and the large cistern contains the only good drinking-water in Axim. Life must be somewhat dull here, but, after all, not so bad as in many an out-station of British India. The chief grievance is that the inmates, the District-commissioner and his medico, are mere birds of passage; they are ordered off and exchanged, at the will of head-quarters, often before they can settle down, and always before they learn to take interest in the place. The works consist of two bastions on the land side; a large one to the south-east, and a smaller to the north-east. Seawards projects a rounded cavalier, fronted by dead ground, or rather water. In the days of the Dutch the platforms carried '22 iron guns, besides some patteraroes.' Now there are two old bronze guns, two 'chambeis' bearing the mark 'La Hague,' and an ancient iron tube dismounted: a seven-pounder mountain-gun, of a type now obsolete, lurks in the shadows of the arched gateway. I afterwards had an opportunity of seeing the ammunition, and was much struck by a tub of black mud, which they told me was gunpowder. The Ashantis at least keep theirs dry.
The dispensary appeared equally well found. For some weeks there was a native assistant; then Dr. Roulston came, and, after a few days, was ordered off at a moment's notice to the remotest possible station. He had no laudanum, no Dover's powders, no chlorodyne, no Warburg; and, when treating M. Dahse for a burst vein, he was compelled to borrow styptics from our store. This style of economy is very expensive. To state the case simply, officials last one year instead of two.
The late Captain P. D. O'Brien, District-commissioner of Axim, did the honours, showing us the only 'antiquity' in the place, the tomb of a Dutch governor, with a rudely cut inscription set in the eastern wall:—
WILLEM
SCHOORWAS
COMAD. OP AXEM
1659.
Amongst the slave-garrison of twenty-five Hausás I found a Wadai-man, Sergeant Abba Osman, who had not quite forgotten his Arabic. Several Moslems also appeared about the town, showing that the flood of El-Islam is fast setting this way. They might profitably be hired as an armed escort into the pagan interior.
Axim, preferably written by the Portuguese 'Axem,' was by them pronounced Ashim or Ashem: no stress, therefore, must be laid upon its paper-resemblance with Abyssinian Axum. [Footnote: I allude to The Guinea or Gold Coast of Africa, formerly a Colony of the Axumites (London, Pottle and Son, 1880), an interesting pamphlet kindly forwarded to me by the author, Captain George Peacock. I believe, as he does, that the West Coast of Africa preserves traces of an ancient connection with the Nile valley and the eastern regions; but this is not one of them.] Barbot calls it 'Axim, or Atzyn, or Achen.' The native name is Essim, which, in the language of the Mfantse or Mfantse-fo (Fanti-race), means 'you told me,' and in the Apollonian dialect 'you know me.' These fanciful terms are common, and they allude to some tale or legend which is forgotten in course of time. The date of its building is utterly unknown. The Fanti tradition is that their race was driven coastwards, like their kinsmen the Ashantis, [Footnote: In Wanderings in West Africa, (ii. 98) I have given the popular derivation of Fanti (Fan-didi = herb-eater) and Asyanti (Sán-didi = corn-eater). Bowdich wrote 'Ashanti' because he learnt the word from the Accra-men.] by tribes pressing down upon them from the north. They must have found the maritime lands occupied, but they have preserved no notices of their predecessors. The port-town became the capital of an upper factor, who ruled the whole coast as far as Elmina. It was almost depopulated, say the old authorities, by long wars with the more powerful Apollonia; but its commanding position has always enabled it to recover from the heaviest blows. It is still the threshold of the western Gold-region, and the principal port of occidental Wásá (Wassaw).
We may fairly predict a future for Axim. The town is well situated to catch the sea-breeze. The climate is equatorial, but exceptionally healthy, save after the rainy season, which here opens a month or six weeks earlier than on the leeward coast. The downfall must, however, have diminished since the times when 'the blacks will tell you the wet weather lasts eleven months and twenty-nine days in the year.' The rains now begin with April and end in September. The position is south of the thermal equator (22º R. = 81 5º F.), which runs north lat. 6º on the western coast, 15º in the interior, and 10º on the eastern seaboard. [Footnote: Berghaus, following Humboldt, places the probable equator of temperature (80º 16') in N. lat. 4º, or south of Axim, rising to N. lat. 13º in Central and in Eastern Africa] Add that the average daily temperature is 75º-80º (F.), rising to 96º in the afternoon and falling after midnight to 70º, and that the wet season on the seaboard is perhaps the least sickly. We were there in January-March, during an unusually hot and dry season, following the Harmatan and the Smokes and preceding the tornadoes and the rains; yet I never felt an oppressive day,—nothing worse than Alexandria or Trieste in early August. The mornings and evenings were mostly misty; the moons were clear and the nights were tolerable. An excessive damp, which mildews and decays everything—clothes, books, metals, man—was the main discomfort. But we were living, as it were, in the open, and we neglected morning and evening fires. This will not be the case when solid and comfortable houses shall be built. The improvement of lodging and diet accounts for the better health of Anglo-Africans, as of Anglo-Indians, in the present day. Our predecessors during the early nineteenth century died of bad shelter, bad food, and bad drink.
The town, built upon a flat partly formed by cutting away the mounds and hillocks of red clay, was well laid out by Mr. Sam, the District-commissioner, after its bombardment during the Ashanti war. The main streets, or rather roads, running north-south, are avenued with shady Ganian or umbrella figs. I should prefer the bread-tree, which here flourishes. These thoroughfares are kept clean enough, and nuisances are punished, as in England. Cross lines, however, are wanted; the crooked passages between the huts do not admit the sea-breeze. Native hovels, also, should be removed from the foreshore, which, as Admiralty property, ought to be kept for public purposes. The native dwellings are composed of split bamboo-fronds (Raphia vinifera), thatched with the foliage of the same tree. They are mere baskets—airy, and perhaps too airy. Some are defended against wind and wet by facings of red swish; a few, like that of the 'king' and chief native traders, are built of adobes (sun-dried bricks), whitewashed outside. Of this kind, too, are the stores and the mining establishments; the 'Akankon House,' near the landing-place; the 'Gold Coast House,' in the interior; the Methodist chapel, a barn-shaped affair; the Effuenta House to the north, and the Tákwá, or French House, to the south.