The counsel is good, but we have done better. Private companies have undertaken the work, and have succeeded where the Government would fail. So far from resisting, the 'kings' have been too glad to accept our offers. And now the course is forwards, without costing the country a farthing, and with a fair prospect of supplying to it a large proportion of the precious metal still wanted. NOTE.--Since these lines were written the _Yiri_ (full) _ma_ (quite) reef has been leased by Mr. Grant, who sent home specimens showing, I am told, 14 oz. per ton. The fine property belongs to King Blay, who built a village upon it and there stationed his brother to prevent 'jumping.' In the spring of 1862 he wished to keep half the ground for his own use. CHAPTER XIX. TO PRINCE'S RIVER AND BACK. On February 15 we proceeded down coast to inspect the mining-lands of Prince's River valley, east of Axim; and this time it was resolved to travel by surf-boat, ignoring that lazy rogue the hammock-man. Yet even here difficulties arose. Mast and sail were to be borrowed, and paddles were to be hired at the rate of a shilling a day each. They are the life of the fishing Aximites; yet they have not the energy to make them, and must buy those made in Elmina. The eastern coast, like that of Apollonia, is a succession of points and bays, of cool-looking emerald jungle and of 'Afric's golden sands' reeking with unkindly heat. Passing the long black tongue of Prepre, or Inkubun, and the red projection, Ponta Terceira, we sighted the important Ajamera village, so called from a tree whose young leaves show a tender pinkish-red. On the Awazan Boppo Hill, about two miles from the trial-shaft of his concession, Dr. Ross found a native 'Long Tom.' It was a hollowed palm-trunk rotten with age, closed at one end and open at the other, with a slant downwards; two forks supported it over a water-filled hollow, measuring ten feet each way by three deep. Ajamera lies a little west of the peninsula, _Africanice_ Madrektanah, a jutting mass of naked granite glazed red by sea-water: on either side of the sandy neck, pinned down, like Pirate's Bay, by cocoa-nuts, there is the safest landing-place. And now we sight our port, distant some nine miles from Axim.