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 washerwoman lost no time in showing up, although her charges have
been greatly reduced. She formerly demanded nearly treble as much as in
London; now, however, she makes only sixteen to twenty shillings a
month, not bad pay in a place where living costs threepence, and
comfortable living sixpence, a day. These nymphs of the wash-tub are
painfully familiar and plain. The dress is a bright cotton foulard bound
on like the anatomy of a turban and garnished, as were our grandmothers'
nightcaps, with huge front bows. Gaudy shawls cover white cotton
jackets; and skirts of bright, showy longcloth suggest the parrot or the
cockatoo. The ornaments are large gold earrings and necklaces of beads
or coral. I could not but remark the difference of tone. There was none
of the extreme 'bumptiousness' and pugnacious impudence of twenty years
ago; indeed, the beach-boys, nowhere a promising class, were rather
civil than otherwise. Not a single allusion to the contrast of 'white
niggahs and black gen'lemen.' Nor did the unruly, disorderly African
character ever show itself, as formerly it often did, by fisticuffing,
hair-pulling, and cursing, with a mixture of English and Dark-Continent
ideas and phraseology, whose _tout ensemble_ was really portentous.
The popular voice ascribes this immense change for the better to the
energetic action of Governor S. Rowe (1876); and if so his statue
deserves to stand beside that of Pope Henessy. We could not fairly
complain of the inordinate noise, which would have been the death of
a sick traveller. Niger cannot speak without bawling. The charge for
landing was only threepence; _en revanche_ the poor fellows
stole every little thing they could, including my best meerschaum.
Cameron and I went ashore to hire Krumen for the Gold Coast, and herein
we notably failed. We disembarked at the camber, a huge pile of masonry,
whose weight upon an insecure foundation has already split the sea-wall
in more than one place. The interior also is silting up so fast that it
will constantly require dredging to admit boats. In fact, the colony
must deeply repent not having patronised Mr. Jenkins's project of a
T-headed pier, on one side of which landing would have been practicable
in all weathers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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