"On the other hand, I am in nowise edified by the dogmatism displayed at the annual meeting of the Guinea Gold Coast Mining Company. A chairman is hardly expected to be an expert, but he must not address his shareholders as if he were a high authority. I read: 'Now, gentlemen, hydraulic sluicing are very easy words to pronounce, but it is a deuced hard operation to perform.' After some exceedingly useless statements about hydraulicking in Australia, he continues: 'The directors took the best advice they could, namely, that of your consulting engineer, and he was opposed to it. He said, "It is quite true that if your country is impregnated with gold, and if you have got great results everywhere by assay, it is advisable, but you have not got any here (!), and therefore it would be very unwise expenditure."' The chairman concludes, 'We were bound then to take the opinion of an expert against the opinion of Captain Burton on that point, because otherwise you would have real reason for blaming us.' "This is really too bad for the unfortunate shareholders, who have only £15,000 left wherewith to carry on the work. Their property is cut by two streamlets, and these have never even been tested for gold. I have still to learn what experience of mining is possessed by the consulting engineer; but that he has a complete ignorance of Africa, I well know. Every writer on the Gold Coast from Bosman to Swanzy tells him that the land is impregnated with gold. He says it is not. As regards his management, it is enough to wreck any company. He recommended a person who reported in his cups that he could find no gold. I am waiting to see how his second _protégé_ turns out; present reports are the reverse of favourable, and if number two fail like number one, I shall offer you a suggestion of my own concerning management on the Gold Coast.