Reynhaut and others tell us, in an 'elendige manier' (a piteous way). The gallant Mynheer commanding fought the natives till his men were shot down, after using 'rock-gold' (nuggets) for bullets. He rolled sundry powder-barrels under the palaver-hall, and stationed there a boy with a match to be applied when he stamped on the floor. He then flung open the gates, hung out a flag of trace, and invited the bloodthirsty savages, who were bent on killing him by torture, to take the hoard of gold for which the attack was made. When all crowded the great room he reproached them with their greed of gain, gave the sign, and blew them and himself into eternity. I am told by a good authority that the natives, whose memories are tenacious on some points, will not show to strangers the ruins which cost their forefathers so dear. The last village on the sands is Kukakun, where the wreck of a schooner saddens the scene. Within a few hundred yards of Akromasi we bent abruptly eastward and exchanged the sands for the usual stiff soil of red clay. The gut is formed by the point-bluff and a southern block, and the surface is covered with dense second-growth--pandanus, the false sugar-cane, ferns large and small, and the sloth-tree, the Brazilian _uba_ or Preguica, with tall, thin white trunk and hanging palmated leaves. The African palm-birds (orioles of the _Merulidae_ family), whose two colours, red (_ntiblii_) and golden yellow (_enadsi_), apparently divide them into as many fighting factions, give a touch, a bright colour to the dulness, and chatter over their pensile homes, which strangers would mistake for cocoa-nuts. Severely hustled and horribly shaken up, we ran down the little valley of the Avin streamlet. It comes from afar, heading, they say, in Abasakasu, a region where gold abounds. In three-quarters of an hour we had cleared the four short miles which separate Axim from the Ancobra ferry. This is the line of a future tramway, which will transport goods from the port to the river; at present they must be shipped in bar-boats, which cost much and carry little. The ground divides itself into three sections--the red clay north of Axim; the sands, whose green-grown upper levels are fitted to support iron-pot sleepers; and the Avin valley, which debouches upon the left bank of the Ancobra. The first and the last divisions are safe for creosoted wood. My friend Mr. Russell Shaw would, I doubt not, take the contract for 4,000_l_., and a macadamised cart-road could be made for 500_l_. This would be the beginning of a much-wanted change. At present the prices of transport are appalling. The French mines pay from 2_l_. to 2_l_. 10_s_. per ton from England to Axim; from Axim to Takwa, forty miles by river and thirty by land, costs them 600 francs (24_l_.) per ton. Moreover, native hands are not always forthcoming.