'Sanitation,' however, is loudly called for; and if cholera come here it will do damage. The southern part of the narrow ledge bearing the town, and including the French establishment, is poisoned by a fetid, stagnant pool, full of sirens, shrimps, and anthropophagous crabs, which after heavy rains cuts a way through its sand-bar to the sea. This marigot is the 'little shallow river Axim,' the Achombene of Barbot, which the people call Awaminísu ('Ghost's or Deadman's Water'). To the north also there are two foul nullahs, the Eswá and the Besáon, which make the neighbourhood pestilential. In days to come the latter will be restored to its old course east of the town and thrown into the Awaminísu, whose mouth will be kept open throughout the year. The eastern suburbs, so to call them, want clearing of offal and all manner of impurities. Beyond the original valley of the Besáon the ground rises and bears the wall of trees seen from the offing. There is, therefore, plenty of building-room, and long heads have bought up all the land in that direction. Mr. Macarthy, of the School of Mines, owns many concessions in this part of the country.
All the evils here noted can easily be remedied. As in the Cairo of Mohammed Ali's day, every house-holder should be made responsible for the cleanliness of his surroundings. The Castle-prison, too, rarely lodges fewer than a dozen convicts. These men should be taken away from 'shot-drill' and other absurdities of the tread-mill type, which diversify pleasant, friar-like lives of eating and drinking, smoking, sleeping, and chatting with one another. Unfortunately, humanitarianism does not allow the lash without reference to head-quarters. Labour must therefore be light; still it would suffice to dig up the boulders from the main thoroughfares, to clean the suburbs, and to open the mouths of the fetid and poisonous lagoons.
Mr. William M. Grant, the clever and active agent of our friend Mr. James Irvine, came on board to receive us, and housed us and our innumerable belongings in his little bungalow facing 'Water Street.' We found life at Axim pleasant enough. Even in these days of comparative barbarism, or at best of incipient civilisation, the station is not wholly desert. The agents of the several firms are hospitable in the extreme. Generally also a manager of the inner mines, or a new comer, enlarges the small circle. There is a flavour of England in 'A. B. and Co., licensed dealers in wine and spirits, wholesale and retail,' inscribed upon boards over the merchants' doors; also in the lawn-tennis, which I have seen played in a space called by courtesy a square: Cameron, by-the-bye, has hired it, despite some vexatious local opposition, and it will be a fine locale for the Axim Hotel now being opened. Sunday is known as a twenty-four hours of general idleness and revelry: your African Christian is meticulous upon the subject of 'Sabbath;' he will do as little work as possible for six days, and scrupulously repose upon the seventh. Whether he 'keeps it holy' is quite another matter, into which I do not care to enquire. Service- and school-hours are announced by a manner of peripatetic belfry—a negroling walking about with a cracked muffin-bell. From the chapel, which adjoins some wattled huts, the parsonage, surges at times a prodigious volume of sound, the holloaing of hymns and the bellowing of anthems; and, between whiles, the sable congregation, ranged on benches and gazing out of the windows, 'catches it 'ot and strong' from the dark-faced Wesleyan missionary-schoolmaster.
We were never wearied of the 'humours' of native Axim. The people are not Fantis, but Apollonians, somewhat differing in speech with the Oji; both languages, however, are mutually intelligible. [Footnote: Oji is also written Otschi, Tschi, Chwee, Twi, Tswi, Otyi, Tyi, or whatever German ingenuity can suggest. I can hardly explain why the late Keith Johnston (Africa) calls the linguistic family 'Ewe' (Ewhe, or properly Whegbe), after a small section of the country, Dahome, Whydah, &c. He was probably led to it by the publications of the Bâle and other German missions.] The men are the usual curious compound of credulity and distrust, hope and fatalism, energy and inaction, which make the negro so like the Irish character. But we must not expect too much from the denizens of African seaports, mostly fishermen who will act hammock-bearers, a race especially fond of Bacchus and worshippers of the 'devil Venus.' Perhaps a little too much license is allowed to them in the matter of noisy and drunken 'native customs,' palavers, and pow-wows. They rarely go about armed; if you see a gun you know that the bearer is a huntsman. They are easily commanded, and, despite their sympathies with Ashanti-land, they are not likely to play tricks since their town was bombarded. In the villages they are civil enough, baring the shoulders, like taking off the hat, when they meet their rulers. Theirs, also, is the great virtue of cleanliness; even when the mornings are coldest you see them bathing on the beach. They are never pinched for food, and they have high ideas of diet. 'He lib all same Prince; he chop cow and sheep ebery day, and fowl and duck he be all same vegeta'l.' They have poultry in quantities, especially capons, sheep with negro faces like the Persian, dwarf milch-goats of sturdy build, dark and dingy pigs, and cattle whose peculiarity it is to be either black or piebald. The latter are neat animals like the smallest Alderneys, with short horns, and backs flat as tables. There are almost as many bulls as there are cows, and they herd together without fighting. Being looked upon as capital, and an honour to the owner, they are never killed; and, although the udders of cows and goats are bursting with milk, they are never milked.
The women differ very little from their sisters of the Eastern Gold Coast. You never see beauty beyond the beauté du diable and the naïve and piquant plainness which one admires in a pug-pup. The forms are unsupported, and the figure falls away at the hips. They retain the savage fashion of coiffure shown in Cameron's 'Across Africa,' training their wool to bunches, tufts, and horns. The latter is the favourite; the pigtails, which stand stiff upright, and are whipped round like pricks of tobacco, may number half a dozen: one, however, is the common style, and the size is said to be determined by a delicate consideration. Opposed to this is the highly civilised atufu, 'kankey,' or bussle, whose origin is disputed. Some say that it prevents the long cloth clinging to the lower limbs, others that it comes from a modest wish to conceal the forms; some make it a jockey-saddle for the baby, others a mere exaggeration of personal development, an attempt to make Aphrodite a Callipygé. I hold that it arose, in the mysterious hands of 'Fashion,' from the knot which secures the body-cloth, and which men wear in front or by the side. Usually this bussle is a mere bundle of cloth; on dress occasions it is a pad or cushion. I had some trouble to buy the specimen, which Cameron exhibited in London.
Men and women are vastly given to 'chaffing' and to nicknaming. Every
child, even in the royal houses, takes a first name after the week-day
[Footnote:
Men. Women.
Adwo (Monday-born) ... Kajo (Cuddjo) ... Adwoa.
Bena (Tuesday-born) ... Kwábina ... Abiena.
Wuku (Wednesday-born) ... Kwáko ... Akudea.
Tan (Thursday-born) ... Kwáo ... Yá (Yawá).
Afio (Friday-born) ... Kofi (Coffee) ... Afuá.
Amu (Saturday-born) ... Kwámina ... Amma.
Ayisi (Sunday-born) ... Kwasi ... Akosúa (Akwasiba).
Monday is the first day of the Oji week. The Sunday-born is corrupted to 'Quashy,' well known in the United States; hence also the 'bitter cup' of guassia-wood. The names of the days are taken from the seven Powers which rule them. Kwa-Si would be Kwá (=akoa, man, slave), and Ayisi (a man) belonging to Ayisi. Amongst the Accra people the first-born are called Téte (masc.) and Dede (fem.), the second Tété and Koko, and the rest take the names of the numerals. So we have Septimus, Decimus, &c.] of its birth, and strangers after that on which they land. Cameron, who shaved his hair, was entitled 'Kwábina Echipu'—Tuesday Baldhead. I became Sásá Kwési (Fetish Sunday), from a fancied clerical appearance, Sásá being probably connected with Sásábonsam, 'a huge earth-demon of human shape and fiery hue.' He derives from asase ('earth'), and abonsam, some evil ghost who has obtained a permanent bad name. Missionaries translate the latter word 'devil,' and make it signify an evil spirit living in the upper regions, or our popular heaven, and reigning over Abonsamkru, the last home of souls, or rather shades of the wicked. Thus sasabonsam would be equivalent to Erdgeist, Waldteufel, or Kobold, no bad nickname for a miner. The people have a wealth of legend, and some queer tale attached to every wild beast and bird. In days to come this folk-lore will be collected.
The gorbellied children are the pests of the settlement. At early dawn they roar because they awake hungry and thirsty; they roar during the day when washed with cold water, and in the evening they roar because they are tired and sleepy. They are utterly spoiled. They fight like little Britons; they punch their mothers at three years of age; and, when strong enough, they 'square up' to their fathers.
The first mining business we had to transact was with Kwámina Blay, of Attabo, Ahin (Ahene) or King of Amrehía, Western Apollonia. He came to visit us in state on January 28. The vehicle, a long basket, big enough to lodge a Falstaff, open like a coffin, and lined with red cloth to receive the royal person and gold-hilted swords, was carried stretcher-fashion by four sturdy knaves. King Blay is an excellent man, true and 'loyal to the backbone;' but his Anglo-African garb was, to say the least, peculiar. A tall cocked hat, with huge red and white plume, contrasted with the dwarf pigtail bearing a Popo-bead, by way of fetish, at the occiput. His body-dress was a sky-blue silk, his waist-cloth marigold-yellow, and he held in hand the usual useless sword of honour, a Wilkinson presented to him for his courage and conduct in 1873-1874. The Ashanti medal hung from his neck by a plaited gold chain of native Trichinopoly-work, with a neat sliding clasp of two cannons and an empty asumamma, or talisman-case. The bracelets were of Popo-beads and thick gold-wire curiously twisted into wreath-knots. Each finger bore a ring resembling a knuckle-duster, three mushroom-like projections springing from each oval shield.
Ahin Blay dismounted with ceremony, and was as ceremoniously received. His features are those of the Fanti, somewhat darker than usual, and his expression is kindly and intelligent: though barely fifty-five his head is frosty and his goatee is snowy. The visit was a state affair, a copy in small of Ashanti and Dahome.