From this point, turning abruptly from north to west, we took the steep narrow path which climbs the Akankon ridge, rising 78 feet above the river. A few paces led us to the prospecting shaft, a native pit squared and timbered by Mr. Cornish. He was assisted by Mr. James B. Ross, 'practical miner, working manager, and mine-owner for the last twenty years in Queensland, Australia.' He thus describes himself in the very able report which he sent to his company; and I am glad to hear that he has returned to the Gold Coast. The shaft, 40 feet from 'the outcrop,' and 50 from the hill-base, is bottomed at the depth of 52 feet. Unfortunately it is only box-timbered, and much of the woodwork was shaken down by the blasts. The sinking through stiff clay, stained with iron, cobalt, manganese, and cinnabar, was reported easy. But where the hanging and foot walls should have been, fragments of clay, iron, and mica-slate showed that the former lie still deeper. My companion proposed a descent into the shaft by bucket and windlass. I declined, greatly distrusting such deserted pits, especially in this region, where they appear unusually liable to foul. Two days afterwards a Kruboy went down and was brought to grass almost insensible from the choke-damp; his hands clenched the rope so tightly that their grip was hard to loose.
We then mounted to 'the outcrop' near the ridge-summit, 100 yards north-north-east. This reef-crest is a tongue of quartz and quartzite veining grey granite: it was found dug out and cleared all round by the people. Mr. Cornish had contented himself with splitting off a fragment by a shot or two.
When the whole hill shall have been properly washed, the contained reefs will present this wall-like appearance. The dimensions are ten feet long by the same height and half that thickness, and the slope shows an angle of 40º. We passed onwards to the top of the ridge, winding among the pits and round holes sunk by the native miners in order to work the casing of the reef. One of these, carefully measured, showed 82 feet. About sixty yards to the north-north-east we reached the crest of what Mr. Ross calls 'Ponsonby Hill.' He notices that the strike of the quartz, which shows visible gold, is from north-north-east to south-south-west, and its underlie to the south-east is at the ratio of one inch in twelve. Cameron found that near the head of the descent, 120 feet to the plain below, three, and perhaps four lodes meet. The true bed, with a measured thickness of 157 feet, strikes north 22º east, the western 355º, and the eastern north 37º east (true). All radiate from one point, a knot which gives 'great expectations.' The natives have opened large man-holes in search of loose gold, and here, tradition says, many nuggets have been found. A greater number will come to light when the miners shall dig the 'blind creek' to the east, and when the roots of the secular trees crowning the summit shall be laid bare by the hose. I would wash down and sluice the whole of the Akankon ridge.
Next day we proceeded to inspect two other reefs lying to the south-west and to the south-east. The first, Asan-kumá(?), lies a few yards from Granton, on the left of the path leading to our landing-place. The ground was covered with deep bush, and painfully infested with the Nkran, or enkran, [Footnote: Anglicè the 'driver,' a small black formica which bites severely, clears out houses, destroys the smaller animals, and has, it is said, overpowered and destroyed hunters when, torpid with fatigue, they have fallen asleep in the bush. The same horrible end, being eaten alive, atom by atom, has befallen white traders whose sickness prevented their escape. 'Accra,' which calls itself Ga, is known to the Oji-speaking peoples as 'Enkran,' and must be translated 'Land of Drivers,' not of White Ants.] which marched in detached but parallel lines. It rises gently in slopes of yellow clay towards the west, and doubtless it covers quartz-reefs, as the lay is the usual meridional. The talus, pitted with the shallow pans called 'women's washings,' shows signs of hard work, probably dating from the days when every headman had his gang of 'pawns' and slaves. Rising at the head of the creek, itself a natural gold-sluice, its bed and banks can carry any number of flumes, which would deposit their precious burden in cisterns near the river. I need hardly say they must be made movable, so as to raise their level above the inundation. Here the one thing wanted would be a miner accustomed to 'hydraulicking' in California or British Columbia, Australia or South Africa. I hope that the work will not be placed in inexperienced hands, whose blunders of ignorance will give the invaluable and infallible process a bad name.
Retracing our steps, we made the chief Sensensé's village, and persuaded him to guide us. The short cut led through a forest and a swamp, which reeked with nauseating sulphuretted hydrogen. We avoided it on return by a détour. After a short hour's walk we ascended a banana-grown hillock, upon which lay the ruins of the little mining-village Abesebá. A few paces further, through a forest rich in gamboge and dragon's blood (not the D. draco), in rubber and in gutta-percha (?), where well-laden lime-trees gave out their perfume, placed us upon the great south-eastern reef. It was everywhere drilled with pits, and we obtained fine specimens from one which measured twenty feet deep. Several of them were united by rude and dangerous tunnels. I have heard of these galleries being pierced in other places; but the process is not common, and has probably been copied from Europeans.
On March 1 was held a formal palaver of headmen and elders. The Akankon concession had been bought by Messieurs Bonnat and Wyatt from Sensensé of the fetish, whose ancestors, he declared, had long ruled the whole country. The rent, they say, was small—$4 per mensem and 15 pereguins (135l. [Footnote: Assuming at 9l. the pereguin, which others reduce at 8l. and others raise to 10l.]) per annum—when operations began. I have heard these gentlemen blamed, and very unjustly, for buying so cheap and selling so dear—17,000l. in cash and 33,000l. in shares. But the conditions were well worth the native's acceptance; and, if he be satisfied, no one can complain. The apparently large amount included the expenses of 'bringing out' the mine; and these probably swallowed a half. When Sensensé received his pay, a host of rival claimants started up. In these lands there is no law against trespass; wherever a plantation is deserted the squatter may occupy it, and popular opinion allows him and his descendants the permanent right of using, letting, or selling it. I do not think, however, that this rule would apply to a white man.
Sensensé's claims were contested by three chiefs—Kofi Blay-chi, Kwáko Bukári, who brought an acute advocate, Ebba of Axim, and Kwáko Jum, a fine specimen of the sea-lawyer; this bumptious black had pulled down the board which marked the Abesebá reef, and had worked the pits to his own profit. After many meetings, of which the present was our last, the litigants decided that hire and 'dashes' should be shared by only two, Sensensé and Kofi Blay-chi. Energetic Jum, finding his pretensions formally ignored, jumped up and at once set out to 'enter a protest' in legal form at Axim.
The crowd of notables present affixed their marks, which, however, they by no means connected with the 'sign of the Cross.' We witnessed the document, and a case of trade-gin concluded an unpleasant business that threatened the Apatim as well as the Akankon concession. I repeat what I have before noted: too much care cannot be taken when title to ground in Africa is concerned. And a Registration Office is much wanted at head-quarters; otherwise we may expect endless litigation and the advent of the London attorney. Moreover, the people are fast learning foreign ideas. Sensensé, for instance, is nephew (sister's son) to Blay-chi, which relationship in Black-land makes him the heir: meanwhile his affectionate uncle works upon the knowledge that this style of succession does not hold good in England.
The eventful evening ended with a ball, which demanded another distribution of gin. The dance was a compound affair. The Krumen had their own. Forming an Indian file for attack, they carried bits of board instead of weapons; and it was well that they did so, the warlike performance causing immense excitement. The Apollonians preferred wide skirts and the pas seul of an amatory nature; it caused shrieks of laughter, and at last even the women and wees could not prevent joining in the sport. Years ago I began to collect notes upon the dances of the world; and the desultory labour of some months convinced me that an exhaustive monograph, supposing such thing possible, would take a fair slice out of a man's life. I learnt, however, one general rule—that all the myriad forms of dancing originally express only love and war, in African parlance 'woman-palaver' and 'land-palaver.' However much the 'quiet grace of high refinement' may disguise original significance, Nature will sometimes return despite the pitchfork; witness a bal de l'Opéra in the palmy days of the Second Empire.
The Kruman ball ended in a battle royal. The results were muzzles swollen and puffed out like those of mandrills, and black eyes—that is to say, blood-red orbits where the skin had been abraded by fist and stick. As they applied to us for justice and redress, we administered it, after 'seeing face and back,' or hearing both sides, by a general cutting-off of the gin-supply and a temporary stoppage of 'Sunday-beef.'