March 4 was a sore trial to us both. We 'went down' on the same day and by our own fault. We had given the sorely-abused climate no chance; nor have we any right to abuse it instead of blaming ourselves. The stranger should begin work quietly in these regions; living, if possible, near the coast and gradually increasing his exercise and exposure. Within three months, especially if he be lucky enough to pass through a mild 'seasoning' of ague and fever, he becomes 'acclimatised,' the consecrated term for a European shorn of his redundant health, strength, and vigour. Medical men warn new comers, and for years we had read their warnings, against the 'exhaustion of the physical powers of the body from over-exertion.' They prescribe gentle constitutionals to men whose hours must do the work of days. It is like ordering a pauper-patient generous diet in the shape of port and beef-steaks; for the safe system, which takes a quarter of a year, would have swallowed up all our time. Consequently we worked too hard. Our mornings and evenings were spent in collecting, and our days in boating, or in walking instead of hammocking. Indeed, we placed, by way of derision, the Krumen in the fashionable vehicle. And we had been too confident in our past 'seasoning;' we had neglected such simple precautions as morning and evening fires and mosquito-bars at night; finally, we had exposed ourselves somewhat recklessly to sickly sun and sweltering swamp. Four days on the burning hill-side completed the work. My companion was prostrated by a bilious attack, I by ague and fever.
'I thought you were at least fever-proof,' says the candid friend, as if one had compromised oneself.
Alas! no: a man is not fever-proof in Africa till he takes permanent possession of his little landed estate. Happily we had our remedies at hand. There was no medico within hail; and, had there been, we should have hesitated to call him in. These gentlemen are Government servants, who add to their official salaries (400l. per annum) by private practice. For five visits to a sick Kruboy six guineas have been charged; 5l. for tapping a liver and sending two draughts and a box of pills, and 37l. 10s. for treating a mild tertian which lasted a week. The late M. Bonnat cost 80l. for a fortnight. Such fees should attract a host of talented young practitioners from England; at any rate they suggest that each mine or group of mines should carry its own surgeon.
Cameron applied himself diligently to chlorodyne, one of the two invaluables on the Coast. We had a large store, but unfortunately the natives have learnt its intoxicating properties, and during our absence from Axim many bottles had disappeared. I need hardly say that good locks and keys are prime necessaries in these lands, and that they are mostly 'found wanting.'
I addrest myself to Warburg's drops (Tinctura Warburgii), a preparation invaluable for travellers in the tropics and in the lower temperates. The action appears to be chiefly on the liver through the skin. The more a traveller sees, the firmer becomes his conviction that health means the good condition of this rebellious viscus, and that its derangement causes the two great pests of Africa, dysentery and fever. Indeed, he is apt to become superstitious upon the subject, and to believe that a host of diseases—gout and rheumatism, cholera and enteric complaints—result from, and are to be cured or relieved only by subduing, hepatic disturbances. My 'Warburg' was procured directly from the inventor, not from the common chemist, who makes the little phialful for 9d. and sells it for 4s. 6d. Some years ago a distinguished medical friend persuaded Dr. Warburg, once of Vienna, now of London, to reveal his secret, in the forlorn hope of a liberal remuneration by the Home Government. Needless to say the reward is to come. I first learnt to appreciate this specific at Zanzibar in 1856, where Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton used it successfully in the most dangerous remittents and marsh-fevers. Cases of the febrifuge were sent out to the Coast during the Ashanti war for the benefit of army and navy: the latter, they say, made extensive use of it. I have persistently recommended it to my friends and the public; and, before leaving England in 1879, I wrote to the 'Times,' proposing that all who owe (like myself) their lives to Dr. Warburg should join in relieving his straitened means by a small subscription. At this moment (June 1882) measures are being taken in favour of the inventor, and I can only hope that the result will be favourable.
The 'drops' are composed of the aromatic, sudorific and diaphoretic drugs used as febrifuges by the faculty before the days of 'Jesuits' bark,' to which a small quantity of quinine is added. Thus the tincture is successful in many complaints besides fevers. Evidently skilful manipulation is an important factor in the sum of its success. Dr. Warburg has had the experience of the third of a century, and the authorities could not do better than to give him a contract for making his own cure.
The enemy came on with treacherous gentleness—a slight rigor, a dull pain in the head, and a local irritation. 'I have had dozens of fevers, and dread them little more than a cold,' said Winwood Reade; indeed, the English catarrh is quite as bad as the common marsh-tertian of the Coast. The normal month of immunity had passed; I was prepared for the inevitable ordeal, and I flattered myself that it would be a mild ague, at worst the affair of a week, Altro!
Next morning two white men, owning that they felt 'awful mean,' left Granton, walked down to Riverside House, and at 8 A.M. embarked upon the hapless Effuenta. The stream rapidly narrowed, and its aspect became wilder. Dead trees, anchored by the bole-base, cumbered the bed, and dykes and bars of slate, overlaid by shales of recent date, projected from either side. The land showed no sign of hills, but the banks were steep at this season, in places here and there based on ruddy sand and exposing strips of rude conglomerate, the cascalho of the Brazil. This pudding is composed of waterworn pebbles, bedded in a dark clayey soil which crumbles under the touch. On an arenaceous strip projecting from the western edge the women were washing and panning where the bottom of the digging was below that of the river. This is an everyday sight on the Ancobra, and it shows what scientific 'hydraulicking' will do. After six hours of steaming, not including three to fill the boiler, we halted at Enfrámadié, the Fanti Frammanji, meaning 'wind cools,' that is, falls calm. It is a wretched split heap of huts on the left bank, one patch higher pitched than the other, to avoid the floods; the tenements are mere cages, the bush lying close to the walls, and supplies are unprocurable. In fact, the further we go the worse we fare as regards mere lodgings; yet the site of our present halt is a high bank of yellow clay, which suggests better things. There is no reason why this miserable hole should not be made the river-depôt.
On March 4 we set out in the 'lizard's sun,' as the people call the morning rays; our vehicle was the surf-boat, escorted by the big canoe. Enfrámadié is the terminus of launch-navigation; the snags in the Dries stop the way, and she cannot stem the current of the Rains. The Ancobra now resembles the St. John's or Prince's River in the matter of timber-floorwork and chevaux de frise of tree-corpses disposed in every possible direction. After half an hour we paddled past the 'Devil's Gate,' a modern name for an old and ugly feature. H.S.M.'s entrance (to home?) is formed by black reefs and ridges projected gridiron-fashion from ledges on either side almost across the stream, leaving a narrow Thalweg so shallow that the boatmen must walk and drag. During the height of the floods it is sometimes covered for a few hours by forty feet of water, rising and falling with perilous continuity.
Beyond 'Devil's Gate' a pleasant surprise awaited us. Mr. D. C. MacLennan, manager of the Effuenta mine, [Footnote: The name was given by M. Dahse; it is that of the first worker, Efuátá, a woman born on Saturday (Efua), and the third of a series of daughters (átá).] stopped his canoe to greet us. He was justly proud of his charge—a box of amalgam weighing 15 lbs. and carrying eighty ounces of gold. It was to be retorted at home and to be followed within a fortnight by a larger delivery, and afterwards by monthly remittances. The precious case, which will give courage to so many half-hearted shareholders, was duly embarked on the A.S.S. Ambriz (Captain Crookes); and its successor, containing the produce of a hundred tons, on the B. and A. Benguela (Captain Porter). Consequently the papers declared that Effuenta was first in the field of results. This is by no means the case. As early as November 1881 Mr. W. E. Crocker, of Crockerville, manager of the important Wásá, (Wassaw) mining-property, sent home gold—amalgam, and black sand [Footnote: I have before noticed this 'golden sea-sand.' It has lately been found, the papers tell me, on the coast about Cape Commerell, British Columbia. A handful, taken from a few inches below the surface, shows glittering specks of 'float-gold,' scales so fine that it was difficult to wash them by machinery. Mem. This is what women do every day on the Gold Coast. The Colonist says that a San Francisco company has at length hit upon the contrivance. It consists of six drawers or layers of plates punched with holes about half an inch in diameter, and covered with amalgam. The gold-sand is 'dumped in;' and the water, turned on the top-plate, sets all in motion: the sand falls from plate to plate, leaving the free loose gold which has attached itself to the amalgam, and very little remains to be caught by the sixth plate. So simple a process is eminently fitted for the Gold Coast.]—a total of sixty-eight ounces to twenty-five tons.