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Updated: May 26, 2025
Hearing that the gold-hilted official swords of the King of Béin were for sale, and wishing to inspect the place, we set off at 3.30 P.M. to cover the 4,769 yards measured along the sands by Mr. Graham. Reaching our destination, eighteen miles distant from Axim, we were carried up the long straight street-road which leads to the old English fort.
We had a large store, but unfortunately the natives have learnt its intoxicating properties, and during our absence from Axim many bottles had disappeared. I need hardly say that good locks and keys are prime necessaries in these lands, and that they are mostly 'found wanting. The action appears to be chiefly on the liver through the skin.
The 'ghost' has not been seen since its last home has been surrounded by a decent paling and inscribed 'Ci-gît Thiebaut. The same pious service was then done for one of our countrymen, Mr. Crawford who died at Axim in the same year. Bossum, are imaginary beings, guardians and so forth, worshipped by the people and called 'fetishes' by Europeans.
We returned to Axim with the highest opinion of 'Apatim, and I rejoiced to hear that the mine will be opened without delay. I spare my readers the slightest description of the troubles that attended our departure from Axim on January 31. Briefly, we began loading at dawn and the loads were not headed before 10 A.M.
The Governor of El Mina is his superior officer, and the fort at Axim is garrisoned by twelve black soldiers from the former place. War has existed for several years between these Dutch settlements and their powerful neighbor, the king of Appollonia, who is daily expected to attack the fortress.
The most remarkable article of dress is one which I have vaguely understood to constitute a part of the equipment of my own fair countrywomen in a word, the veritable bustle. Among the belles of Axim, there is a reason for the excrescence which does not exist elsewhere; for the little children ride astride of the maternal bustle, which thus becomes as useful, as it is unquestionably ornamental.
At Axim, on the Gold Coast, this annual expulsion is preceded by a feast of eight days, during which mirth and jollity, skipping, dancing, and singing prevail, and "a perfect lampooning liberty is allowed, and scandal so highly exalted, that they may freely sing of all the faults, villanies, and frauds of their superiors as well as inferiors, without punishment, or so much as the least interruption."
It moves one's sense of the absurd to compare the desolate condition of the Goldland, which is to supply the money, with the civilised machinery in England which is to work it, companies and syndicates, shares, debentures, and what not. I have treated the subject of Axim with a minuteness that is almost 'porochial; its future importance must be my excuse.
He was found hanging in the 'bush' behind Elmina Castle. Most men supposed it to be a case of suicide; a few of course surmised that he had been kidnapped and murdered by orders from Kumasi. During the worst times not a single English employé of the mines had left his post to take refuge in the Axim fort.
Governor 'Dangan's Wharf, a contemptible jetty, and its puny lighthouse have at length made way for a quay, along which ships, despite sunken rocks, were expected to lie; but the sea soon broke down the perpendicular wall, and now it is being rebuilt with a 'batter. A hollow square behind it shows the workmen blasting the material, a fine-grained grey granite, which seems here, as at Axim, to be the floor-rock of the land.
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