To The Gold Coast for Gold: A Personal Narrative. Vol. IIBurton, Richard Francis, Sir
History
To The Gold Coast for Gold: A Personal Narrative. Vol. II
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Ghana -- Description and travel; Gold mines and mining -- Ghana
When the whole hill shall have been properly washed, the contained reefs
will present this wall-like appearance. The dimensions are ten feet long
by the same height and half that thickness, and the slope shows an angle
of 40º. We passed onwards to the top of the ridge, winding among the pits
and round holes sunk by the native miners in order to work the casing of
the reef. One of these, carefully measured, showed 82 feet. About sixty
yards to the north-north-east we reached the crest of what Mr. Ross calls
'Ponsonby Hill.' He notices that the strike of the quartz, which shows
visible gold, is from north-north-east to south-south-west, and its
underlie to the south-east is at the ratio of one inch in twelve. Cameron
found that near the head of the descent, 120 feet to the plain below,
three, and perhaps four lodes meet. The true bed, with a measured
thickness of 157 feet, strikes north 22º east, the western 355º, and the
eastern north 37º east (true). All radiate from one point, a knot which
gives 'great expectations.' The natives have opened large man-holes in
search of loose gold, and here, tradition says, many nuggets have been
found. A greater number will come to light when the miners shall dig the
'blind creek' to the east, and when the roots of the secular trees
crowning the summit shall be laid bare by the hose. I would wash down and
sluice the whole of the Akankon ridge.
Next day we proceeded to inspect two other reefs lying to the south-west
and to the south-east. The first, Asan-kuma(?), lies a few yards from
Granton, on the left of the path leading to our landing-place. The ground
was covered with deep bush, and painfully infested with the _Nkran_, or
_enkran_, [Footnote: _Anglice_ the 'driver,' a small black formica which
bites severely, clears out houses, destroys the smaller animals, and has,
it is said, overpowered and destroyed hunters when, torpid with fatigue,
they have fallen asleep in the bush. The same horrible end, being eaten
alive, atom by atom, has befallen white traders whose sickness prevented
their escape. 'Accra,' which calls itself Ga, is known to the Oji-speaking
peoples as 'Enkran,' and must be translated 'Land of Drivers,' not of
White Ants.] which marched in detached but parallel lines. It rises gently
in slopes of yellow clay towards the west, and doubtless it covers
quartz-reefs, as the lay is the usual meridional. The talus, pitted with
the shallow pans called 'women's washings,' shows signs of hard work,
probably dating from the days when every headman had his gang of 'pawns'
and slaves. Rising at the head of the creek, itself a natural gold-sluice,
its bed and banks can carry any number of flumes, which would deposit
their precious burden in cisterns near the river. I need hardly say they
must be made movable, so as to raise their level above the inundation.
Here the one thing wanted would be a miner accustomed to 'hydraulicking'
in California or British Columbia, Australia or South Africa. I hope that
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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