To The Gold Coast for Gold: A Personal Narrative. Vol. IBurton, Richard Francis, Sir
History
To The Gold Coast for Gold: A Personal Narrative. Vol. I
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Ghana -- Description and travel; Gold mines and mining -- Ghana
Indescribable was the want of hospitality which characterised the
Hispano-Englishmen of Las Palmas. I have called twice upon a
fellow-countryman without his dreaming of asking me upstairs. Such
shyness may be understood in foreigners, who often entertain wild ideas
concerning what an Englishman expects. But these people were wealthy;
nor were they wholly expatriated. Finally, it was with the utmost
difficulty that I obtained from one of them a pound of home-grown
arrowroot for the sick child of a friend.
On the other hand, I have ever met with the greatest civility from the
Spanish Canarians. I am especially indebted to Don J. B. Carlo, the
packet-agent, who gave me copies of 'El Museo Canario, Revista de la
Sociedad del mismo nombre' (Las Palmas)--the transactions published by
the Museum of Las Palmas. Two mummies of Canarian origin have lately
been added to the collection, and the library has become
respectable. The steamers are now so hurried that I had no time to
inspect it, nor to call upon Don Gregorio Chil y Naranjo, President of
the Anthropological Society. This savant, whose name has become well
known in Paris, is printing at Las Palmas his 'Estudios Historicos,'
&c., the outcome of a life's labour. Don Agustin Millares is also
publishing 'La Historia de las Islas Canarias,' in three volumes, each
of 400 to 450 pages.
I made three short excursions in Grand Canary to Telde, to the Caldera,
and to Doramas, which showed me the formation of the island. My notes
taken at the time must now be quoted. _En route_ for the former, we
drove past the large city-hospital: here in old times was another strong
wall, defending the southern part, and corresponding with the northern
or Barranco line. The road running to the south-south-west was
peculiarly good; the tunnel through the hill-spur suggested classical
and romantic Posilippo. It was well parapeted near the sea, and it had
heavy cuttings in the white _tosca_, a rock somewhat resembling the
_calcaire grossier_ of the Paris basin. This light pumice-like
stone, occasionally forming a conglomerate or pudding, and slightly
effervescing with acids, is fertile where soft, and where hard quite
sterile. Hereabouts lay Gando, one of the earliest forts built by the
_Conquistadores_. We then bent inland, or westward, crossed barren
stony ground, red and black, and entered the pretty and fertile valley
with its scatter of houses known as La Vega de Ginamar.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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