At first the vegetation of the banks was almost wholly of rhizophores, white and red; the wood of the latter burns like coal, and the bark is admirable for tanning. In places their long suckers, growing downwards to the stream, resembled a cordwainer's walk set on end. A bush of yellow-flowered hibiscus clothes the banks that are less level; and, higher still, grows a tall and beautiful mimosa with feathery web and pendent pods of brightest green and yellow. Then came the brabs and palms, fan-, cocoa-, oil-, and bamboo-, with their trunks turned to nurseries of epiphytes and air-plants. The parasites are clematis and a host with hard botanical names.
Towards evening, as the stream narrowed, the spectacle was imposing. The avenues and trees stood up like walls, but living walls; and in places their billowy bulges seemed about to burst upon us like Cape-rollers. Every contrast was there of light and dark, short and tall, thick and thin; of age and death with lusty youth clinging around it; of the cocoa's drooping frond and the aspiring arm of bombax, the silk-cotton-tree, which rains brown gossamer when the wind blows; of the sloth-tree with its topping tuft, and the tangled mantle of the calamus or rattan, a palm like a bamboo-cane. The bristly pod of the dolichos (pruriens) hangs by the side of the leguminosæ, from whose flattened, chestnut-coloured seeds snuff-boxes are made further east. It was also a floresta florida, whose giants are decked with the tender little blossoms of the shrub, and where the bright bracts and yellow greens of this year's growth light up the sombre verdure of an older date. The type of this growth is the red camwood-tree, with its white flower of the sweetest savour. Imagine an English elm studded with pinks or daisies, gardenias or hyacinths. There is nothing more picturesque than the shiftings and changes of aspect upon these African streams, which at first seem so monotonous. After dawn the smoking water, feeling tepid to the hand and warmer than the atmosphere, veils the lower levels and makes the forest look as if based on air. Noon brings out every variety of distance with startling distinctness, and night, especially moonlit night, blurs with its mists long tracts of forest, rains silver over the ridges, and leaves the hollows in the blackest shade. Seen from above, the sea of trees looks like green water raised to waves by the wind, and the rustling in the breeze mimics the sound of distant surf.
A catamaran of four cork-trees, a cranky canoe, the landing-place of a bush-road, a banana-plantation, and a dwarf clearing, where sat a family boiling down palm-nuts for oil, proved that here and there the lowland did not lack lowlanders. The people stared at us without surprise, although this was only the fourth time they had seen a surf-boat. The river-bed, grid-ironed with rocky reefs, showed us twenty-two turns in a few miles; some were horseshoe-bends, sweeping clean round to the south, and one described a curve of 170º. After slow and interrupted paddling for an hour and a half, at 6 P.M., when night neared, we halted at the village of Esubeyah, or 'Water-made;' [Footnote: The radical of water is 'su,' curiously corresponding with Turkish and with that oldest of the Turkish tongues, Chinese.] and my companion made sure of his distances by a latitudinal observation of Canopus.
Next morning we had 'English tea' for the first and last time in West Africa; usually we preferred the Russian form, drunk in a tumbler with a slice of lime that sinks or of lemon that floats. Mr. Gillett had given us a bottle of 'Romanshorn' from the Swiss farm, an admirable preparation which also yields fresh butter. The price is high, 1s. 6d. a bottle, or, for the case of forty-eight imperial pints, 72s.; this, however, is the Coast, not the cost figure. For invalids, who are nauseated by the sickly, over-sugared stuff popularly called 'tin-juice,' and who feel life put in them by rum and milk, it is an invaluable comfort.
We left Esubeyah in the 'lizard's sun' at 7 A.M., and found the river changed for the worse. The freshets had uptorn from the banks the tallest trees, which in places formed a timber-floor; and the surf-boat gallantly charged, till she leaked, the huge trunks, over which she had often to be lifted. Nothing would be easier than to clear away these obstacles; a few pounds of gun-cotton would remove snags and sawyers, and dredging by boats would do the rest. Then Prince's River would become an excellent highway.
An hour and a half's slow paddling placed us at the landing-place of Bekaí (a village in general), the usual hole in the bush. Here navigation ends in the dry season. We walked to and through the mean little settlement, and established ourselves at Anima-kru, [Footnote: The English 'croom' is a corruption of kru-mu or krum, 'in the village.' Properly speaking 'kru' and 'man' are the town, or common centre of many akura (plantation-hamlets), in which the owners keep their families and familiæ.] a mile from the landing-place on the Yenna, or Prince's River. It faces a splendidly wooded mound upon the right or opposite bank. Mrá Kwámi, the headman, received us hospitably, cleared a house, and offered us the usual palm-wine and snuff: the powder, composed of tobacco, ginger, and cloves, is boxed in a round wild fruit.
The village contained only two men; the rest were drinking, at Prince's town, the proceeds of a puncheon of palm-oil. The plantations still showed fruits and flowers probably left by the Portuguese—wild oranges, mangoes, limes, pine-apples, and the 'four o'clock,' a kind of 'marvel of Peru,' supposed to open at that hour. The houses, crépi or parget below and bamboo above, are mere band-boxes raised from the ground; the smaller perfectly imitated poultry-crates. All appeared unusually neat and clean, with ornamental sheets of clam-shells trodden into the earth before the thresholds. 'Fetish' was abundant, and so was that worst of all plagues the sand-fly.
After breakfasting we set out north over a sandy level, clearly reclaimed from the sea, and in a few minutes struck the true coast. Here begins the St. John mining-ground, conceded for prospecting to Messieurs Gillett and Selby. A fair path runs up hillocks of red-yellow clay, metalled with rounded quartz and ironstone-gravel, roped with roots and barred with trees; their greatest elevation may have been 120 feet. Two parallel ridges, trending north-north-east, are bisected by torrents pouring westward to the river: now dry, they have rolled down huge boulders in their frequent floods. These 'hard-heads,' which try the hammer, show a revetment of cellular iron upon a solid core of greenstone and bluish trap. Some fragments not a little resembled the clay-slates of the Brazilian gold-mines. Such was the concession which we named São João do Principe.
Presently the chief, Mrá Kwámi, announced to us that we had reached the northern boundary-line of the estate. He now would have left us, as it is not customary, when gold is in question, for one head-man to enter another's country. We succeeded, however, in persuading him to show us the other side of the river. A short walk up and down hill led to the ford of the 'Yenna,' the native name, probably a corruption of 'St. John.' It lies a little above the dyke where the stream breaks into a dwarf fall, and below the crossing where a ferry formerly plied. We now found a regular river, no longer a lagoon-stream; the clear water, most unlike the matter-suspending and bitumen-coloured fluid of the lower bed, was beautified by lilies with long leaves and broad flowers of virgin white.
We rode the Kruboys pick-a-back across the broken reef through which the stream bursts and brawls, and walked a few paces up the left bank to the Kumasi [Footnote: The Ashantis translate the word 'under the Kum-tree;' the Fantis make it mean 'slay all.'] village. It had been lately deserted; but we found there Kwáko Benta, headman of Ajámera, who had spent a week in forcing the deserters to rejoin the corps. He was the reverse of cordial, probably wishing at once to prove importance and to give our guide the cold shoulder: we persuaded him, however, to show us the Muku concession, granted to Messieurs Lintott and Spink.