'Are there no means of opening this country up to trade, no means of infusing into it an element superior to that of the Fanti races, of holding in check the savagery of the inland tribes, and preventing the whole coast again becoming abandoned to fetishism and human sacrifices? To the writer's mind there is but one method, and that one by an appeal to man's most ignoble passion--the lust of gold. This country is not without reason called the Gold Coast. Gold is there in profusion, and to be had for the seeking. We have ourselves seen the women washing the sand at Cape Coast and finding gold. When Captain Thompson visited the Wassaw (Wasa) country, he found the roads impassable at night by reason of the gold-pits upon them. Captain Butler describes western Akim as a country teeming with gold. Captain Glover has said that in eastern Akim gold is plentiful as potatoes in Ireland, and the paths were honeycombed with gold-pits. Dawson has distinctly stated his opinion that the Fanti gold-mines are far more valuable than those of Ashanti--that the only known Ashanti gold-mine of great value is that of Manoso; whereas the Wassaw and the Nquamfossoo mines, as well as the Akim mines, have rock-gold (nuggets) in profusion. He says that the Ashantis get their gold from the Fantis in exchange for slaves, whom they buy for two or three loads of coller- (kola-) nuts, worth less than half an ounce of gold, and sell to the Fantis for as much as two and a quarter ounces of gold. Let our Government prospect these mines; let Acts be passed similar to those by which vast railway companies are empowered to compel persons to sell their land at a fair price; let our Government, by means of Houssa troops, guarantee protection to companies formed to work the mines, and let the payment to the kings in whose country they are be by royalties upon the gold obtained. The kings would offer the utmost resistance to their mines being thus taken and worked; but they have never worked them properly themselves, and they will never work them properly; and it would be no injustice to allow others to do so. If the true value of these services were ascertained by Government mining engineers, if the Government would guarantee protection to those engaged in working them, companies would soon be formed to reap the rich harvest to be found upon the coast. Chinese coolies would be imported, who would breed in with the natives and infuse some energy into the Fanti races. Trade would soon follow, roads be made, and the whole country opened up. The engagement of our Government should be a limited one, for if once the gold-mines were at work there would be no further fear that the country would ever fell back into the hands of the Ashantis.'