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By night we also passed Cape Apollonia and its four hummocks, which are faintly visible from Axim. The name has nothing to do, I need hardly say, with Apollo or his feasts, the Apolloniæ, nor has it any relationship with the admirable 'Apollinaris water. It was given by the Portuguese from the saint [Footnote: Butler's Lives gives 'S. Apollonia (not Appolonia, as the miners have it), v.m. February 9. This admirable old maid leaped into the fire prepared for her by the heathen populace of Alexandria when she refused to worship their 'execrable divinity. There are also an Apollonius (March 5), 'a zealous holy anchorite' of Egyptian Antinous; and Apollinaris, who about A.D. 376 began to 'broach his heresy, denying in Christ a human soul.] who presided over the day of discovery. In the early half of the present century the King of Apollonia ruled the coast from the Assini to the Ancobra Rivers; the English built a fort by permission at his head-quarters, and carried on a large trade in gold-dust. Meredith tells us that, when his Majesty deceased, some twenty men were sacrificed on every Saturday till the 'great customs' took place six months afterwards. The underlying idea was, doubtless, that of Dahome: the potentate must not go, like a 'small boy, alone and unattended to the shadowy realm. The 'African Cruiser' [Footnote: Journal of an African Cruiser, by an officer of the U.S. navy. Edited by Nathaniel Hawthorn. Aberdeen: Clark and Son, 1848.] speaks of the royal palace being sumptuously furnished in European style; of gold cups, pitchers, and plates, and of vast treasures in bullion. When the King died sixty victims were slain and buried with their liege lord; besides a knife, plate, and cup; swords, guns, cloths, and goods of various kinds. The corpse, smeared with oil and powdered cap-
He showed me fine specimens of gold collected at Newtown, the English frontier-settlement immediately east of French Assini. I had also warned him to look out for, and he succeeded in finding, beds of bitumen permeated with petroleum: this material will prove valuable for fuel and for asphalting, if not for sale.
If ever the exchange comes again to be discussed, I hope that we shall secure by treaty or purchase an exclusively British occupation of Grand Bassam and the Assini valley, mere prolongations of our Protectorate on the Gold Coast. A future page will show the reason why our imperial policy requires the measure.
"And in the meantime the Boy Aviators retain their claim on the ivory that we fought so hard to get," put in Frank. Old Mr. Barr turned on him with a wolfish fury. Indeed in his rage he resembled nothing so much as a long, lean, timber wolf deprived of his expected prey. "We will see all about that!" he raged. "There is a law in Fort Assini though there may not be here.
Our villagers told us strange tales of a magician near Assini who can decapitate a man and restore him to life, and who lately had placed a dog's head on a boy's body. Who can 'doubt the fact'? the boy was there! I will now borrow freely from the diary kept during our five days' inspection of the Izrah diggings. Cameron worked hard at a rough survey of the ground which Mr.
Eastward lies the 'Blockhouse' of M. Verdier, 'agent of the Government at Assini, so called from its battlemented roof. It is the old Fort Nemours, built in 1843. The 'Poste, abandoned during the war of 1870, was let to Messieurs Swanzy; it is a series of ridge-roofs surrounded by a whitewashed stockade.
It should be our object to acquire by purchase or treaty, or both, the whole territory subject to Grand Bassam and Assini. The reasons may be gathered from the preceding pages.
Outside the village I came across the skull of a young elephant, from which I extracted the teeth. The only report of a white man having been here before was long ago, when, some of the old men told me, he came from Assini direction, but turned back again. The village was neatly laid out in streets and was beautifully clean.
The substance of the thunder-stone is the greenstone-trap everywhere abundant, and taking with age a creamy patina like the basalt of the Haurán. About New Town and Assini these implements become very plentiful. Mr. S. Cheetham informs me that the thinner hatchets, somewhat finger-shaped, are copied in iron by the peoples of the Benin River.
Inside the house, which was delightfully cool and darkened by jalousies from the glaring heat outside, the young adventurers were introduced to Madame Desplaines and two little girls, who constituted the family of the consular agent, who also kept the general supply store at Assini. After dinner that evening, M. Desplaines talked long and earnestly to the boys.
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