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
extended from N. lat. 20° to S. lat. 20°. I found it an independent
government, one of four, in 1860 to 1865. In 1866 it again passed under
the rule of Sierra Leone; in 1874 this ill-advised measure was
withdrawn, and the Gambia was placed under an Administrator and a
Legislative Council, the former subject to the Governor-in-Chief of
Sierra Leone. A score of years ago it was garrisoned by some 300 men of
the West African Corps. Now it is reduced to 100 armed policemen: the
Gambia militia, composed of the Combo and Macarthy's Island forces, is
never called out. The population of the twenty-one square miles is given
by Whittaker for 1881 as 14,150, including 105 whites. The Wesleyans
here, as everywhere, preponderating on the Coast, number 1,405 souls;
the Catholics 500, and the Episcopalians 200.
Another half-hour placed before us Bathurst in full view. The first
salient point is the graveyard, where the station began and where the
stationed end. Wags declare that the first question is, 'Have you seen
our burial-ground?' A few tomb-stones, mostly without inscriptions, are
scattered so near the shore that corpses and coffins have been washed
away by the waves. If New Orleans be a normal 'wet grave,' this
everywhere save near the sea is dry with a witness, the depth and
looseness of the sand making the excavation a crumbling hole. Four
governors, a list greatly to be prolonged, 'lie here interred.' But
matters of climate are becoming too serious for over-attention to such
places or subjects.
The first aspect of this pest-house from afar is not unpleasant. A long
line of scattered houses leads to the mass of the settlement, faced by
its Marine Parade, and the tall trees give it a home-look; some have
compared the site with 'parts of the park at Cheltenham.' At a nearer
view the town of some 5,000 head suggests the idea of a small European
watering-place. The execrable position has none of those undulations
which make heaps of men's homes picturesque; everything is low, flat,
and straight-lined as a yard of pump-water. The houses might be those of
Byculla, Bombay; in fact, they date from the same epoch. They are
excellent of their kind, large uncompact piles of masonry,
glistening-white or dull-yellow, with blistered paint, and slates,
tiles, or shingles, which last curl up in the sun like feathers. A
nearer glance shows the house-walls stained and gangrened with rot and
mildew, the river-floods often shaking hands with the rains in the
ground-floors. The European ends in beehive native huts, rising from the
swamp and sand; and these gradually fine off and end up-stream, becoming
small by degrees and hideously less.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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