The Residency is a fine large building in an advanced stage of decomposition; the glorious vegetation around it--cotton-trees, caoutchouc-figs, and magnificent oleanders--making the pile look grimmer and grislier. And here we realised, to the fullest extent, how thoroughly ruined is the hapless settlement. The annual income is about 24,500_l_., the expenditure is 20,000_l_. in round numbers, and the economies are said to reach 25,000_l_. This sum is forwarded to the colonial chest, instead of being expended in local improvements; and, practically, when some petty war-storm breaks it is wasted like water. The local officials are not to be blamed for this miserable system, this niggardly colonial policy of the modern economical school, which contrasts so poorly with the lavish republican expenditure in French Senegambia. They have, to their honour be it said, often protested against the taxes raised from struggling merchants and a starveling population, poor as Hindûs, being expended upon an 'imperial policy.' But economy is the order of the day at home, and an Administrator inclined to parsimony gladly seizes the opportunity of pleasing his 'office.' The result is truly melancholy. I complained in 1862 that the 'civil establishment' at Bathurst cost 7,075_l_. I now complain that it has been reduced to 2,600_l_. [Footnote: Administrator = 1,300_l_;.; Chief Magistrate = 600_l_.; Collector and Treasurer = 700_l_. Thus there is no Colonial Secretary, and, curious to say, no Colonial Chaplain. I formerly recommended the establishment to be reduced by at least one-half, and that half to be far better paid (_Wanderings in West Africa_, i. 182).] The whole establishment is starved; decay appears in every office, public and private; and ruin is writ large upon the whole station. An Englishman who loves his country must blush when he walks through Bathurst. Even John Bull would be justified in wishing that he had been born a Frenchman in West Africa.