The only approach to grandeur are the long surges and white combers of the mournful and misty Atlantic. They roll like the waving prairie-land, curl their huge heads, and dash down in a fury of foam. 'On the top of a billow we ride,' with a witness. Here and there black dots peer through the surf, and to touch them is death. This foul shore presents a formidable barrier to landing: there absolutely is no safe place between Apollonia and the Ancobra. European employes avoid tempting the breakers; they disembark and re-embark for home, and that is all. Mr. Grant assures us that there is no risk; Mr. Grillett, who has worked the coast since 1875, says the contrary; no man knows it better or fears it more. Some places are worse than others; for instance, Inenyapoli is exceptionally dangerous. The sea is shallow, and ships, requiring eight fathoms, must, to be safe, anchor four miles out. The coast-soundings in the Admiralty charts are positively unsafe, and will remain so until revised. On the other hand, the reefs and rocks of Axim Bay have wholly disappeared, with some exceptions seen off Kikam and Esyama. Looking inland we find the shore mostly subtended by a _marigot_, or salt-water lagoon, a miniature of those regular rivers which made the Slave Coast what it was. And along the sea we can detect its presence by the trickling of little rills guttering and furrowing the sandy surface. The formation of these characteristic African features, which either run parallel with or are disposed at various angles to the coast, is remarkably simple. There is no reason to assume with Lieutenant R. C. Hart that they result from secular upheaval. [Footnote: Page 186, _Gold Coast Blue Book_. London, 1881]. The 'powerful artillery with which the ocean assails the bulwarks of the land' here heaps up a narrow strip of high sand-bank; and the tails of the smaller streams are powerless to break through it, except when swollen by the rains. They maintain their level by receiving fresh water at the head and by percolation through the beach, while most of them are connected with the sea. We halted for rest at the Esyama village; its landmarks are the ronnier, the glorious palmyra (_Borassus flabelliformis_), here called 'women's cocoa-tree.' The village looked peculiarly neat with its straight, sandy street-roads, a quarter of a mile long; and the tenements generally are better than those of Axim. We noticed the usual feature, a long thatched barn of yellow clay--school-cum-chapel. The people are fond of planting before their doors the _felfa_, croton or physicnut (_Jatropha curcas_), whose oil so long lighted Lisbon. It is a tree of many uses. Boys suck the honey of the flower-stalk; and adults drink or otherwise use, as corrective of bile, an infusion of the leaves and the under bark. They could not give me the receipt for the valuable preparation of the green apple, well known to the Fantis of Accra.