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
[Footnote: Mr. Johnson still survives; not so the well-known Madeiran
names Bewick, (Sir Frederick) Pollock, and Lowe (Rev, R. T.) The latter
was drowned in 1873, with his wife, in the s.s. _Liberia_, Captain
Lowry. The steamer went down in the Bay of Biscay, it is supposed from a
collision. I sailed with Captain Lowry (s.s. _Athenian_) in January
1863, when St. George's steeple was rocking over Liverpool: he was
nearly washed into the lee scuppers, and a quartermaster was swept
overboard during a bad squall. I found him an excellent seaman, and I
deeply regretted his death.]
As early as 1827 'The Rambler in Madeira' (Mr. Lyall) proclaimed the
theme utterly threadbare, in consequence of 'every traveller opening
his quarto (?) with a short notice of it;' and he proceeded at once to
indite a fair-sized octavo. Humboldt said something of the same sort in
his 'Personal Narrative,' and forthwith wrote the worst description of
the capital and the 'Pike' of Tenerife that any traveller has ever
written of any place. He confesses to having kept a meagre diary, not
intending to publish a mere book of travels, and drew his picture
probably from recollection and diminutive note-books.
I found Funchal open-hearted and open-handed as ever; and the pleasure
of my stay was marred only by two considerations, both purely
personal. Elysian fields and green countries do not agree with all
temperaments. Many men are perfectly and causelessly miserable in the
damp heats of Western India and the Brazil. We must in their case simply
reverse the Wordsworthian dictum,
Not melancholy--no, for it is green.
They are perfectly happy in the Arabian desert, and even in Tenerife,
where others feel as if living perpetually on the verge of high fever.
To this 'little misery' were added the displeasures of memory. Our last
long visit was in 1863, when the Conde de Farrobo ruled the land, and
when the late Lord Brownlow kept open house at the beautiful Vigia. I
need hardly say that we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves: the impressions of
that good old time were deep and durable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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