Embarking about 3 P.M. on board _Effuenta_, we steamed up the Ancobra, which here looks more like a river and less like a lagoon. The settlements become more important, the first being Nfia-kru, or the 'dog-village.' There were many influents, which showed like dark breaches in the rampart of verdure. Such was the Ahema (Huma), a creek that breaks the left bank. This name may become memorable. Upon its upper course Messieurs Gillett and Selby have a small mining concession, and in its golden gravels Mr. O. Pegler, Associate of the School of Mines, found a crystal which he strongly suspected to be a diamond. It was taken to Axim, where its glass-cutting properties were proved. Unfortunately during one of these trials the setting gave way, and the stone fell into a heap of rubbish, where it could not be found. Many have suspected that these regions will prove diamantiferous; and it is reported that an experienced French mineralogist, who has visited the South African diggings, landed at Assini and proposed to canoe up the Tando River to the Takwa mines, prospecting in search of his specialty. A portentous cloud ahead growled its thunder and discharged thin rain, while the westing sun shone clear and bright. In Dahome the combination suggests the ghosts of Kutomen going to market, [Footnote: The Akra-men make Sisaman, their Kutomen, Scheol or Hades, a town on one of the Volta holms or somewhere beyond. The Gold Coast has three species of departed 'spirits' (_asamanfo_)--the shades of men who fell in fight or by accident (as by a tree-fall); common spirits, and lingering spirits, so called because they do not enter Shade-land, but hover about man's dwellings. The slain never associate with the commonalty; they walk about rubbed with white clay and clad in white; nor are they afraid of, whereas the others fly from, and are unwilling to be seen by, the living. 'It is said in the Dead-land below the earth there are kings as well as slaves. If you have been long sick in this world you will recover health there after three years, but one killed in battle or by accident will be well in a month or so. It is said that Dead-land is below (earth); others declare it is above (the sky). About this there is no certainty. Where one is taken to when he dies there his spirit is; when they die and take you to the spirits' grove, then your spirit is in the grove. The town (or land) of the departed spirits is not in the grove, but in the earth; it is a large town, and going there a mountain has to be climbed. The way of one who died a natural death is dark in heaven; but if one who died in battle or by accident take that way, some of the white clay with which he is rubbed falls down; therefore his way (_via lactea_) appears white. In the spirits' grove the departed spirits do not stay always; only on certain days they assemble there for eating, drinking, and playing.' Yet these 'spiritualists' (_with_ the spirits) have scant pleasure in contemplating the future.