The only approach to grandeur are the long surges and white combers of the mournful and misty Atlantic. They roll like the waving prairie-land, curl their huge heads, and dash down in a fury of foam. 'On the top of a billow we ride,' with a witness. Here and there black dots peer through the surf, and to touch them is death. This foul shore presents a formidable barrier to landing: there absolutely is no safe place between Apollonia and the Ancobra. European employés avoid tempting the breakers; they disembark and re-embark for home, and that is all. Mr. Grant assures us that there is no risk; Mr. Grillett, who has worked the coast since 1875, says the contrary; no man knows it better or fears it more. Some places are worse than others; for instance, Inenyápoli is exceptionally dangerous. The sea is shallow, and ships, requiring eight fathoms, must, to be safe, anchor four miles out. The coast-soundings in the Admiralty charts are positively unsafe, and will remain so until revised. On the other hand, the reefs and rocks of Axim Bay have wholly disappeared, with some exceptions seen off Kikam and Esyáma.
Looking inland we find the shore mostly subtended by a marigot, or salt-water lagoon, a miniature of those regular rivers which made the Slave Coast what it was. And along the sea we can detect its presence by the trickling of little rills guttering and furrowing the sandy surface. The formation of these characteristic African features, which either run parallel with or are disposed at various angles to the coast, is remarkably simple. There is no reason to assume with Lieutenant R. C. Hart that they result from secular upheaval. [Footnote: Page 186, Gold Coast Blue Book. London, 1881]. The 'powerful artillery with which the ocean assails the bulwarks of the land' here heaps up a narrow strip of high sand-bank; and the tails of the smaller streams are powerless to break through it, except when swollen by the rains. They maintain their level by receiving fresh water at the head and by percolation through the beach, while most of them are connected with the sea.
We halted for rest at the Esyáma village; its landmarks are the ronnier, the glorious palmyra (Borassus flabelliformis), here called 'women's cocoa-tree.' The village looked peculiarly neat with its straight, sandy street-roads, a quarter of a mile long; and the tenements generally are better than those of Axim. We noticed the usual feature, a long thatched barn of yellow clay—school-cum-chapel. The people are fond of planting before their doors the felfa, croton or physicnut (Jatropha curcas), whose oil so long lighted Lisbon. It is a tree of many uses. Boys suck the honey of the flower-stalk; and adults drink or otherwise use, as corrective of bile, an infusion of the leaves and the under bark. They could not give me the receipt for the valuable preparation of the green apple, well known to the Fantis of Accra.
After returning to Axim we heard of rich diggings two hours' march inland, or north with easting from Esyáma. They are called 'Yirima,' or 'Choke-full'—that is, of gold. The site is occupied by King Blay's family, and the place is described as containing three or four reefs which have all been more or less worked by the natives. After we left the coast Yirima was visited by Mr. Grant, who reported it as exceptionally promising.
About sunset we hit the Ebumesu, or 'Winding Water.' The people declare that it had a single mouth till the earthquakes of July 1862, which shook down Accra, raised a divide, and made a double embouchure. The eastern fork, known as the Páná, is the drain of a large and branchy lagoon, brackish water, bitumen-coloured or brassy-yellow, with poisonous vegetation, and bounded by mangroves abounding in tannin. These water-forests grow differently from the red and white rhizophores of Eastern Africa. We shall again be ferried over the upper part of the western mouth. Both have bad bars, especially the latter. I therefore can by no means agree with Mr. Walker's report:—'The western outlet of the Ebumesu, near the village of Eku Enu, or Ekwanu, is quite practicable for ordinary surf-boats during the dry season—say half the year—and even in the middle of June I found the bar smooth and safe. Having for thirty years worked some of the worst bars and beaches' (the Gaboon? or the Sherbro?) 'along some hundreds of miles of the West Coast, I am able to state that the Ebumesu bar might be safely utilised for landing goods and machinery; but during the heavy surf of the rainy season goods could always be disembarked at Axim, and, if necessary, carried along the beach to the mouth of the Ebumesu, and thence by boat to the tramway from that river to the mine.' This last statement is quite correct.
All the Aximites described the Ebumesu bars as practically impassable. Cameron and I agreed that the only way of entering them is by running the boat ashore, unloading her, and warping her round the point, as we shall afterwards do at Prince's. But the best line to the Izrah concession has not yet been discovered. I strongly impressed the necessity of careful search upon Mr. A. A. Robertson, the traffic-manager of the Company. For the present I hold the surf along shore and the Ebumesu bar to be equally dangerous. The land-tongue between the two streams is the favourite haunt of mosquitoes and sand-flies, and it produces nothing save mud and mangroves, miasma and malaria. Yet here in 1873-74 loyal and stout-hearted King Blay defended himself against the whole Apollonian coast, which actively sympathised with the Ashantis. [Footnote: Captain Brackenbury, vol. ii, p. 29, The Ashanti War, &c., gives an account of King Blay fighting the Ashantis on the Ebumesu.] He was at last relieved by the Wásás (Wassaws) coming to his side; and now he has little to fear. He can put some 5,000 musketeers into the field; and, during the late Ashanti scare, he offered to aid us with 7,000, if we could supply the extras with arms and ammunition.
When the 'Queen of Shades' arose, and it became too dark to see the world, we halted at the Sensyéré village, and found good sleeping-quarters in the guest-house of the headman, Bato. Fortunately we had brought mattresses. The standing four-poster of the country offers only cross-planks covered with the thinnest matting. As the ancient joke of many a lugubrious African traveller says, it combines bed and board. Next morning, despite the chilly damp and the 'old-woman-cannot-see,' as the Scotch mist is here called, our men were ready within reasonable limits. After two hours' hammock we found ourselves at Atábo, capital of eastern Apollonia, about to pay our promised return-visit to good King Blay. It is useless to describe the settlement, which in no way differs from those passed on the path. The country-people related its origin as follows:—A Fanti man from the country between Secondee (Sekondi), or Fort Orange, and Shamah (Chamah), at the mouth of the Bosom Prah, when driven out by war, first founded 'Kabeku,' near the present place of that name. His sons built Béin, or Behin, [Footnote: The aspirate is hardly audible. Captain Brackenbury, generally so careful, manages to confound Béin and Benin.] meaning a 'strong man,' and Atábo, in Fanti atába, the name of a tree with a reddish-yellow fruit. The latter was paramount till late years, when turbulent and unruly Béin was allowed to set up for herself an independent king; and the sooner things return to the status quo ante the better for peace.
King Blay's guest-house of whitewashed swish is a model of its kind. You pass through a large compound, which contains the outhouses, into a broad, deep verandah, generally facing away from the sea. It opens upon a central room adorned with German prints of Scriptural subjects—Mariahilf, for instance, all gaudy colour and gilt spangles. On each side of this piece are sleeping-rooms. The furniture of the five is exceedingly simple—a standing bedstead, a table, and a few wooden chairs. But Ahin Blay is a civilised man who strews his floors with matting, and has osier fauteuils from Madeira. These quarters are quite wholesome and comfortable enough for temporary use. They would be greatly improved by mounting on pillars or piles; and they might serve for all seasons save the rainy.
Mr. Graham, who dispenses elementary knowledge to the missionary pupils, came to us at once, and kindly offered his aid as 'mouf.' These useful men, who serve as go-betweens and interpreters, are called 'scholars' by the people, and are charged with making profit out of whites and blacks. In the afternoon Mr. Graham brought me two neolithic stone-implements. We then set out for the 'palace,' a large congeries of houses and huts, guided by a mighty braying of horns and beating of drums, and by Union Jacks, with the most grotesque adjuncts of men and beasts, planted in the clean and sandy street-road. King Blay received us in his palaver-hall, and his costume now savoured not of Europe, but of 'fetish.' He had been 'making customs,' or worshipping after country-fashion, and would not keep us waiting while he changed dress. The cap was a kind of tall hood, adorned with circles of cowries and two horns of the little bush-antelope; the robe was Moorish, long and large-sleeved, and both were charged with rolls of red, white, and blue stuff, supposed to contain grígrís, or talismans. The Ashanti medal, however, was still there; indeed, he wore it round his neck even on the march, when his toilette was reduced to a waist-cloth and a billycock. After discussing palm-wine in preference to trade-gin, we persuaded King Blay, despite all his opposition, that 'time is gold,' and that with strange and indelicate haste we must set out early on the morrow for the Izrah mine. His main difficulty was about clearing the path; he had issued strong orders upon the subject, but African kings often command and no one cares to obey. The monarchy is essentially limited, and the lieges allow no stretch of power, unless the ruling arm be exceptionally long and strong.
Hearing that the gold-hilted official swords of the King of Béin were for sale, and wishing to inspect the place, we set off at 3.30 P.M. to cover the 4,769 yards measured along the sands by Mr. Graham. Reaching our destination, eighteen miles distant from Axim, we were carried up the long straight street-road which leads to the old English fort. It is the normal building, a house on bastions, both well and solidly made of stone and lime. Amongst the materials I found a fine yellow sandstone-grit and a nummulite so weathered that the shells stood out in strong relief. Both were new to us on this trap-coast, and no one could say where they were quarried; many thought they must have come from Europe, others that they are brought from inland. The masonry of the sea-front was pitted with seven large wounds, dealt by as many shells when we broke down our own work. Such was the consequence of sympathising with the Ashantis in 1873, when Axim also was bombarded.