Above the rock-line is a selvage of low vegetation—ipom[oe]a, white and mauve-flowered; rushes and tangle-grass, a variety of salsolaceæ, and the cyperus, whose stalk is used like the kalam, or reed-pen, further east. These growths are filmed with spiders' webs, whose central shafts lead to their nests. The highest levels, only a few feet above water, are grown with a dense bush that wants the matchet. Here are remains of plantations, a little knot of bananas, a single tall cocoanut, many young palms, and a few felled trunks overgrown with oysters. Europeans have proposed to build bungalows on Bobowusúa, where they find fresh sea-air, and a little shooting among the red-breasted ring-doves, rails, and green pigeons affecting the vegetation. It appears to us a good place for mooring hulks. The steamers could then run alongside of them and discharge cargo for the coming tramway, while surf-boats carrying two or three tons could load for the Ancobra River.
The eastern or inner continuation of Bobowusúa is Poké islet, a similar but smaller block. During spring-tides they are linked together and to the shore by reefs that stand up high and dry. Poké is the rock where, according to Barbot, 'the negroes put their wives and children when they go to war.' The tradition is that the Dutch mined it for silver. The metal is known to exist in several places on and behind the coast, at Bosumato, upon the Ancobra River south of 'Akankon,' and even at Kumasi. Besides, gold has not yet been found here unalloyed with silver.
I was fortunate in collecting from this part of Africa stone-implements before unknown to Europe. My lamented friend Winwood Reade, [Footnote: The Story of the Ashantee Campaign (pp. 2-4 and 314). London, Smith and Elder, 1874.] one of those
Peculiar people whom death has made dear,
was the first to bring them home from the eastern regions, Akwapim (Aquapim), Prahsu, and the Volta River. Arrived at Axim, I nailed to the walls of our sitting-room a rough print showing the faces and profiles of worked stones. The result was a fair supply from the coast both up and down till I had secured thirteen. [Footnote: I read a paper upon these stone-implements (July 11, 1882) before the Anthropological Society at the house of my friend, the President, General A. Pitt-Rivers; and made over to him my small stock. It will find a home at Oxford, with the rest of his noble anthropological collection, lately presented to the University.] All were of the neolithic or ground type; the palæolithic or chipped was wholly absent, and so were weapons proper, arrowpiles and spear-points.
Mr. Carr, the able and intelligent agent of Messieurs Swanzy, brought me sundry pieces and furnished me with the following notes. The 'belemnites' are picked up at the stream-mouths after freshets; but the people, like all others, call them 'lightning-stones' (osráman-bo) or abonua, simply axe. They suppose the ceraunius to fall with the bolt, to sink deep in the earth, and to rise to the surface in process of time. The idea is easily explained. All are comparatively modern, and consequently thinly covered with earth's upper crust; this is easily washed away by heavy rains; and, as thunder and lightning accompany the downfalls, the stones are supposed to be the result.
The osráman-bo are used in medicine; they 'cool the heart;' and water in which they are steeped, when given to children, mitigates juvenile complaints. One of my collections owes its black colour to having been boiled in palm-oil by way of preserving its virtues; it resembles the básanos of Lydian Tmolus; but the Gold Coast touchstone is mostly a dark jasper imported from Europe. The substance of the thunder-stone is the greenstone-trap everywhere abundant, and taking with age a creamy patina like the basalt of the Haurán. I heard, however, that at Abusi, beyond Anamabo (Bird-rock), and other places further east worked stones of a lightish slaty hue are common. About New Town and Assini these implements become very plentiful. Mr. S. Cheetham informs me that the thinner hatchets, somewhat finger-shaped, are copied in iron by the peoples of the Benin River. These expert smiths buy poor European metal and, like other West Africans, turn out a first-rate tool.
Axim seems to have been a great centre of stone-manufacture. Mr. Carr showed us a dozen huge boulders of greenstone, chiefly at the eastern angle of the wart that bears, in dangerous proximity to his stores, his powder-magazine. The upper surfaces are scored and striped with leaf-shaped grooves, formed like old Greek swords; some of them are three feet long by three inches wide and three deep. I made a sketch of the place; Cameron photographed it, and on return carried off a huge slice of the block, which is now in the British Museum. We afterwards found these striated stones on the sea-ward face of St. Anthony Fort, in northern Axim, and on other parts of the seaboard.
Axim, the gate of this El Dorado, has not yet much reason to thank England for ruling her. A mean economy annually hoards from 20,000l. to 30,000l, [Footnote: In 1878 the revenue was 105,091l. and the expenditure 68,410l., and in other years the contrast was even greater. The omniscient 'Whittaker' tells us that in 1879 the figures stood at 54,908l. income versus an outlay of 46,281l.; and there was no debt.] forwarded to the colonial caisse, to be wasted upon 'little wars,' and similar miseries, instead of being spent upon local improvements. The unwholesome bush (the Dutch 'bosch') or wood, backed by the primæval forest, surges up to the very doors. The little plank-bridges are out of repair, and the merchants will not supply the Government with new boards, save for ready money; otherwise payment may be delayed for a year. The highway to head-quarters, Cape Coast Castle, is a yellow thread streaking the green, a hunter's path trodden in the jungle. For 16s. 6d. a private messenger goes to and returns from the capital, a distance of eighty-two miles, in four or five days. The public post starts on Wednesdays, halts without reason between Fridays and Mondays at Sekondi (Seecondee), and consumes a week in the down-march. I have already noted the want of sanitation, the condition of the ammunition, and the absence of medical stores. It moves one's sense of the absurd to compare the desolate condition of the Goldland, which is to supply the money, with the civilised machinery in England which is to work it, companies and syndicates, shares, debentures, and what not.
I have treated the subject of Axim with a minuteness that is almost 'porochial;' its future importance must be my excuse. The next chapter will show that we are truly in the Land of Gold, in an Old New California.