On April 6 I reached the Mine d'Or d'Aboassu, this being my second visit. The first, on the previous Sunday, had been more interesting in the point of anthropological than of geological study. The day of rest had been devoted to a general jollification by most of the whites, and the blacks had ably followed suit. The best example was set by the doctor attached: he was said to have emptied sixty-two bottles of cognac during his twenty-three days of steamer-passage. But, brandy proving insufficient, he had recourse to opium, chloral, and bromide of potassium, a pint and a half of laudanum barely sufficing for the week. I need hardly say where the abuse of stimulants and opiates lands a man, either in Western Africa or in England. From the Abosu village and its abominations I turned sharp to the north-west, and ascended the steep western flank of Abo Yao, whose highest point is 312 feet above sea-level. The distance from Crockerville is a mile and three-quarters, or a mile in a straight line, and from Takwa, about six. M. Dahse increases the latter to nine miles, the difference of latitude being three and a quarter miles, and of longitude four. My map will be the first to correct these distances, which are exaggerated by the native carriers to get more pay. The summit of Abo Yao commands an extensive view to the north. Here the range of vision is about sixteen miles over the greenest of second growths; and the whole is dotted with _buttes_ of red clay, somewhat lower than 'On the Stone' (_Abosu_). It is easy to see that here again we have an ancient archipelago, like that which formerly fringed the shore of Axim, but of older formation. In fact, I should not expect to find a true coast before entering the grassy zone north of the great belt of forest. Each hill must carry at least one core of auriferous reef. The intervening valleys, gullies, and gulches, seldom more than a hundred feet above ocean-level, have been warped up by gradual deposition from the north, and are doubtless full of rich alluvium. This might be worked by steam-navvies, and washed upon the largest possible scale; the result would be excellent ground for plantations. I look upon Abosu as an eastern outlier of the greater Takwa ridge. But although the hill preserves the normal direction the reef lies almost at right angles to it, crossing the upper end and striking from north 40º west to south 40º east. I am unable to divine what caused this curious dislocation. The gold matrix is still the Takwa gneiss, rarely showing visible metal. Possibly the present diggings have struck only a large branch or a break.