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
The sea-front of the triangle, whose lowest houses are sprinkled by the
wave-spray, is bounded on the east by Battery Point. It is a grassy flat
with a few fine trees, and benches ever black with the native
lounger. Here the regimental band plays on Wednesdays; an occasional
circus pitches its tents, and 'beauty and fashion' flock to see and be
seen. The many are on foot; the few use Bath-chairs or _machilas_,
--_fautenils_ hung to a pole. The only carriage in the place
belongs to the Governor, and he lost no time in losing one of
his horses. Riding is apparently unknown.
The Battery is the old Fort Falconbridge. A worm-eaten gun or two, far
more dangerous to those in rear than to those in front, rises _en
barbette._ The affair would fall in half an hour before the mildest
of gunboats. Yet by fortifying three points at an expense of some 6,000£
to 8,000£ Sá Leone might be decently defended. The first is Lighthouse
Point, along which ships entering and leaving perforce must run; the
second would be King Tom's Point, flanking the harbour-front; and the
third would be Johnson's Battery, where salutes are now fired, a work
lying above Government House upon a spur of Barrack Hill. Needless to
say all three would want the heaviest guns.
Running the eye west of the Battery, a few wooden houses or sheds, some
of them overhanging the dwarf cliff, the black rocks, and the red-yellow
sands, lead to Taylor's warehouses, a huge pile of laterite still
unfinished. Here the traditional 'man and boy' may sometimes be seen
working in the cooler and more comfortable hours. Beyond it, on a level
with the water, stands the new camber, where we shall land. Then comes
the huge block built by Mr. Charles Heddle, of Hoy, who by grace of a
large fortune, honourably made at Freetown, has become proprietor of a
noble château and broad lands in France. It has now been converted into
the Crown commissariat-store. The sea-frontage has a clear fall of
eighty feet, whereas, from the street behind the wooden upper story, it
appears below the average height. Very mean are the custom-house and
adjoining coal-shed. Governor 'Dangan's Wharf,' a contemptible jetty,
and its puny lighthouse have at length made way for a quay, along which
ships, despite sunken rocks, were expected to lie; but the sea soon
broke down the perpendicular wall, and now it is being rebuilt with a
'batter.' A hollow square behind it shows the workmen blasting the
material, a fine-grained grey granite, which seems here, as at Axim, to
be the floor-rock of the land. No wonder that the new harbour-works have
cost already 70,000_l_., of which 50,637_l_. are still owed,
and that the preposterous wharfage-duty is 10_s_. per ton. To avoid
this and the harbour-dues, ships anchor, whenever they safely can, in
the offing, where the shoals are Nature's breakwaters. West of the
quarry-hollow, in my day a little grassy square, are the old
Commissariat-quarters, now a bonded warehouse. This building is also a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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