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
All the evils here noted can easily be remedied. As in the Cairo of
Mohammed Ali's day, every house-holder should be made responsible for the
cleanliness of his surroundings. The Castle-prison, too, rarely lodges
fewer than a dozen convicts. These men should be taken away from
'shot-drill' and other absurdities of the tread-mill type, which diversify
pleasant, friar-like lives of eating and drinking, smoking, sleeping, and
chatting with one another. Unfortunately, humanitarianism does not allow
the lash without reference to head-quarters. Labour must therefore be
light; still it would suffice to dig up the boulders from the main
thoroughfares, to clean the suburbs, and to open the mouths of the fetid
and poisonous lagoons.
Mr. William M. Grant, the clever and active agent of our friend Mr. James
Irvine, came on board to receive us, and housed us and our innumerable
belongings in his little bungalow facing 'Water Street.' We found life at
Axim pleasant enough. Even in these days of comparative barbarism, or at
best of incipient civilisation, the station is not wholly desert. The
agents of the several firms are hospitable in the extreme. Generally also
a manager of the inner mines, or a new comer, enlarges the small circle.
There is a flavour of England in 'A. B. and Co., licensed dealers in wine
and spirits, wholesale and retail,' inscribed upon boards over the
merchants' doors; also in the lawn-tennis, which I have seen played in a
space called by courtesy a square: Cameron, by-the-bye, has hired it,
despite some vexatious local opposition, and it will be a fine _locale_
for the Axim Hotel now being opened. Sunday is known as a twenty-four
hours of general idleness and revelry: your African Christian is
meticulous upon the subject of 'Sabbath;' he will do as little work as
possible for six days, and scrupulously repose upon the seventh. Whether
he 'keeps it holy' is quite another matter, into which I do not care to
enquire. Service- and school-hours are announced by a manner of
peripatetic belfry--a negroling walking about with a cracked muffin-bell.
From the chapel, which adjoins some wattled huts, the parsonage, surges at
times a prodigious volume of sound, the holloaing of hymns and the
bellowing of anthems; and, between whiles, the sable congregation, ranged
on benches and gazing out of the windows, 'catches it 'ot and strong' from
the dark-faced Wesleyan missionary-schoolmaster.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account