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
On April 24 the B. and A. s.s. _Loanda_ (Captain Brown) anchored in the
roads. Mr. Grant accompanied me on board, and showed himself useful and
energetic as usual. At Cape Palmas we shipped the Honourable Doctor and
Professor Blyden. He pointed out to me certain hillocks on the coast about
Grand Bassa, where he said gold had lately been found. The lay of the land
and the strike and shape of the eminences reminded me strongly of those I
had left behind me. The 'Secretary of the Interior,' who had been
compelled to leave his college, assured me that if wiser counsels prevail
Liberia will abandon her old Japanese policy of exclusion, and will open
her ports to European capital and enterprise. At Sierra Leone I called
upon Governor Havelock, who was recovering from the accident of a
dislocated shoulder. Both he and the 'Governess' were in the best of
health. At Madeira, on May 12, my companion Burton joined us, and we had a
week of dull passage to Liverpool. As we left on Friday and carried a
reverend gentleman on board, the cranky old craft was sorely tossed about
for two successive days, and we were delayed off the Liverpool bar,
arriving on the 20th instead of the 18th of May, 1882.
CONCLUSION.
The journey and the voyage ended, as such things should do, with a dinner
of welcome at the Adelphi, given to us by our hospitable friend Mr. James
Irvine. And here we had the first opportunity of delivering the message
which we had brought home from the Golden Land.
APPENDIX I
Sec.1. THE ASHANTI SCARE.
That fears of an Ashanti attack upon the mines of the Gold Coast
Protectorate are rather fanciful than factual we may learn from the
details of the Blue Book 'Gold Coast, 1881.' The 'threatened Ashanti
invasion,' popularly termed the 'Ashanti scare,' did abundant good by
showing up the weakness of that once powerful despotism, and the
superiority in numbers and in equipment of the coastlanders over the
inlanders. It is true that there are tribes, like the Awunahs of the
Volta, and villages, like Bein in Apollonia, which still sympathise with
our old enemy. But only the grossest political mismanagement, like that
which in 1876 abandoned our ally, the King of Juabin, to the tender
mercies of his Ashanti foeman, aided by the unwisest economy, which
starves everything to death save the treasure-chest, will ever bring about
a general movement against us.
On December 1, 1880, died, to the general regret of native and stranger,
Mr. Ussher, Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Gold Coast; a veteran
in the tropics and an ex-commissariat officer, whose political service
dated from 1861. In British India a change of rulers is always supposed to
offer a favourable opportunity for 'doing something,' often in the shape
of a revolt or a campaign. The same proved to be the case in West Africa,
where the Ashanti is officially described as 'crafty, persistent,
mendacious, and treacherous.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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