To the Gold Coast for Gold

R >> Richard F. Burton >> To the Gold Coast for Gold

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Notus and Afer, black with thund'rous clouds
From Serraliona;

and the old French 'Serrelionne' was the most correct translation. The
reason is disputed; some invoke the presence of the Queen of the Cats,
others the leonine rumbling of the re-echoed thunder. The latter
suggested the Montes Claros of the Portuguese. Ca da Mosto in 1505 tells
us that the explorers 'gave the name of Sierra Leone to the mountain on
account of the roaring of thunder heard from the top, which is always
buried in clouds.' But the traveller, entering the roadstead, may see in
the outline of Leicester Cone a fashion of maneless lion or lioness
couchant with averted head, the dexter paw protruding in the shape of a
ground-bulge and the contour of the back and crupper tapering off
north-eastwards. At any rate, it is as fair a resemblance as the French
lion of Bastia and the British lion of 'Gib.' Meanwhile those marvellous
beings the 'mammies' call 'the city' 'Sillyown,' and the pretty, naughty
mulatto lady married to the Missing Link termed it 'Sa Leone.' I shall
therefore cleave to the latter, despite 'Mammy Gumbo's' box inscribed
'Sa leone.'

Presently the lighthouse, four to five miles distant from the anchorage,
was seen nestling at the base of old Cabo Ledo, the 'Glad Head,' the
Timni 'Miyinga,' now Cape 'Sa Leone.' Round this western point the sea
and the discharge of two rivers run like a mill-race. According to
Barbot (ii. 1) 'the natives call Cabo Ledo (not Liedo) or Tagrin (Cape
Sa Leone) 'Hesperi Cornu,' the adjoining peoples (who are lamp-black)
Leucsethiopes, and the mountain up the country Eyssadius Mons.' All the
merest conjecture! Mr. Secretary Griffith, of whom more presently, here
finds the terminus of the Periplus of Hanno, the Carthaginian, in the
sixth century B.C., and the far-famed gorilla-land. [Footnote: This I
emphatically deny. Hanno describes an eruption, not a bush-fire, and Sa
Leone never had a volcano within historic times. There is no range fit
to be called Theon Ochema (Vehicle of the Gods), which Ptolemy places on
the site of Camarones Peak, and there is no Notou Keras, or Horn of the
South. Lastly, there is no island that could support the gorilla: we
must go further south for one, to Camarones and Corisoo in the Bight of
Benin.]

Formerly the red-tipped lantern-tower had attached to it a bungalow,
where invalids resorted for fresh air; it has now fallen to pieces, and
two iron seats have taken its place. Over this western end of the
peninsula's northern face the play of the sea-breeze is strong and
regular; and the wester and north-wester blow, as at Freetown, fifty
days out of sixty. The run-in from this point is picturesque in clear
weather, and it must have been beautiful before the luxuriant forest was
felled for fuel, and the land was burnt for plantations which were never
planted. A few noble trees linger beside and behind the lighthouse,
filling one with regret for the wanton destruction of their
kind. Lighthouse Hillock, which commands the approach to the port, and
which would sweep the waters as far as the Sa Leone River, will be
provided with powerful batteries before the next maritime war. And we
must not forget that Sa Leone is our only harbour of refuge, where a
fleet can water and refit, between the Gambia and the Cape of Good Hope.

The northern face of the Sa Leone peninsula is fretted with little
creeks and inlets, bights and lagoons, which were charming in a state of
nature. Pirate's Bay, the second after the lighthouse, is a fairy scene
under a fine sky; with its truly African tricolor, its blue waters
reflecting air, its dwarf cliffs of laterite bespread with vivid
leek-green, and its arc of golden yellow sand, upon which the feathery
tops of the cocoa-palms look like pins planted in the ground. To the
travelled man the view suggests many a nook in the Pacific islands. The
bathing is here excellent: natural breakwaters of black rock exclude the
shark. The place derives its gruesome name from olden days, when the
smooth waters and the abundant fish and fruit tempted the fiery
filibusters to a relache. It was given in 1726 by Mr. Smith, surveyor to
the Royal African Company, after Roberts the pirate, who buried 'his
loot' in the Isles de Los, had burned an English ship. There is also a
tradition that Drake chose it for anchoring.

Beyond Pirate's Bay, and separated by a bushy and wooded point, lies
Aberdeen Creek, a long reach extending far into the interior, and
making, after heavy rains, this portion of the country

Both land and island twice a day.

The whole site of Sa Leone is quasi-insular. Bunce or Bunch River to the
north, and Calamart or Calmont, usually called Campbell's Creek, from
the south, are said to meet at times behind the mountain-mass; and at
all seasons a portage of a mile enables canoes to paddle round the
hill-curtain behind Freetown. This conversion of peninsula into islet is
by no means rare in the alluvial formations further south.

Aberdeen Creek abounds in sunken rocks, which do not, however, prevent a
ferry-boat crossing it. Governor Rowe began a causeway to connect it
with the next village, and about a third of the length has already been
done by convict labour. Aberdeen village is a spread of low thatched
huts, lining half-cleared roads by courtesy called streets. Murray Town
and Congo Town bring us to King Tom's Point. Here is the old Wesleyan
College, a large whitewashed bungalow with shingled roof, upper
_jalousies,_ and lower arches; the band of verdure in front being
defended from the waves by a dwarf sea-wall and a few trees still
lingering around it. The position is excellent: the committee, however,
sold it because the distance was too great for the boys to walk, and
bought a fitter place near Battery Point. Thus it became one of the many
Government stores. A deep indentation now shows Upper Town or Kru Town,
heaps of little thatched hovels divided by remnants of bush. It is,
despite its brook, one of the impurest sites in the colony: nothing can
teach a Kruman cleanliness; a Slav village is neatness itself compared
with his. This foul colony settled early in Sa Leone, and in 1816 an
ordinance was passed enabling it to buy its bit of land. The present
chief is 'King' Tom Peter, who is also a first-class police-constable
under the Colonial Grovernment; and his subjects hold themselves far
superior to their brethren in the old home down coast. 'We men work for
cash-money; you men work for waist-cloth.' Again 'pig-iron and tenpenny
nails!'

Beyond this point, at a bend of the bight, we anchor a few hundred feet
from the shore, and we command a front view of roadstead and 'city.'
St. George's Bay, the older 'Baie de France,' would be impossible but
for the Middle Ground, the Scarcies Bank, and other huge shoals of sand
pinned down by rocks which defend the roadstead from the heavy send of
the sea. It is supplied with a tide-rip by the Tagrin, Mitomba, Rokel,
or Rokelle, the Sa Leone River, which Barbot makes the ancients term Nia
(N_ia_), and which the Timni tribe call Robung Dakell, or Stream of
Scales. Hence some identify it with Pliny's 'flumen Bambotum crocodilis
et hippopotamis refertum.' Its northern bank is the low Bullom shore, a
long flat line of mud and mangrove, on which all the fevers, Tertiana,
Quartana, and Co., hold their court. The sea-facing dot is Leopard,
anciently Leopold, Island, where it is said a leopard was once seen: it
is, however, a headland connected by a sandspit with the leeward-most
point of the coast. The Bullom country takes a name after its tribe. A
score of years ago I was told they were wild as wild can be: now the
chief, Alimami (El-Imam) Sanusi, hospitably receives white faces at his
capital, Callamondia. Moreover, a weekly post passes through Natunu to
Kaikonki _via_ Yongro, Proboh, and Bolloh.

Inland (east) of the Bulloms, or lowlanders, dwell the Timnis, who drove
to seaward the quondam lords of the land. Kissy, Sherbro, and Casamansa
are all named from their 'Reguli.' They retain a few traditional words,
such as 'potu,' meaning a European: similarly in Central Africa the King
of Portugal is entitled Mueneputo. Butter is also 'Mantinka,' the
Lusitanian _Manteiga_, and a candle is _Kandirr_. Although 'the
religion of Islam seems likely to diffuse itself peaceably over the
whole district in which the colony (Sa Leone) is situated, carrying with
it those advantages which seem ever to have attended its victory over
negro superstition,' [Footnote: _Report of Directors of Sierra Leone
Company to the House of Commons_, quoted by Winterbottom and the
Rev. Mr. Macbriar.] the tribe has remained pagan.

Buttressing the southern shore of the Rokel's _debouchure_ is a dwarf
Ghaut, a broken line of sea-subtending highlands, stretching
south-south-east some eighteen miles from Cape Sa Leone to Cape
Shilling. Inland of these heights the ground is low. The breadth of the
peninsula is about twelve miles, which would give it an area of 300
square miles, larger than the Isle of Wight. There are, besides it, the
Kwiah (Quiah) country, British Sherbro, an important annexation dated
1862; the Isles de Los, the Bananas, and a strip of land on the Bullom
shore,--additions which more than treble the old extent.

The peninsula is distinctly volcanic, and subject to earthquakes: the
seismic movement of 1858 extended to the Gold Coast, and was a precursor
of the ruins of 1862. [Footnote: For the older earthquakes see
Winterbottom, i, 34-5.] Its appearance, however, is rather that of a
sandstone region, the effect of the laterite or volcanic mud which, in
long past ages, has been poured over the plutonic ejections; and the
softly rounded contours, with here and there a lumpy cone, a tongue of
land, and a gentle depression, show the long-continued action of water
and weather. This high background, which arrests the noxious vapours of
the lowlands and of the Bullom shore, and which forbids a thorough
draught, is the fons malorum, the grand cause of the fevers and malaria
for which the land has an eternal ill fame. The 'Sultan' of the Ghauts
is Regent Mountain, or Sugarloaf Peak, a kind of lumpy 'parrot's beak'
which rises nearly 3,000 feet above sea-level: one rarely sees even its
base. The trip to the summit occupies two days; and here wild coffee is
said to flourish, as it does at Kwiah and other parts of the
lowland. The 'Wazir' is Wilberforce, which supports sundry hamlets set
in dense bush; and Leicester Cone, the lioness-hill, ranks third. The
few reclaimed patches, set in natural shrubbery, are widely scattered:
the pure, unsophisticated African is ever ashamed of putting hand to hoe
or plough; and, where the virgin soil would grow almost everything, we
cannot see a farm and nothing is rarer than a field. Firing the bush
also has been unwisely allowed: hence the destruction of much valuable
timber and produce; for instance, tallow-trees and saponaceous
nut-trees, especially the _Pentadesma butyracea_, and the noble
forest which once clothed the land from Sa Leone to the Niger.

Looking towards the Rokel River, we see the Fourah Bay and College, a
large and handsome building, now terribly out of repair. This
establishment, the 'Farran's House' of old maps, is well known to
readers of propagandist works; it opened on February 18, 1828, with six
pupils, one of whom was the 'boy Ajai,' now Bishop Crowther of the Niger
territory. The Church Missionary Society has spent upon it a small
treasury of money; at present it ranks as a manner of university, having
been affiliated in May 1876 to that of Durham. Sealed papers are sent
out from England, but perhaps the local examiners are easy distributors
of B.A.s and so forth to the golden youth of Sa Leone. It is free to
all, irrespective of religious denomination, a liberal concession which
does it high honour. The academical twelve-month has three terms; and
there are three scholarships, each worth 40_l._ per annum, open for
competition every year. Not bad for a maximum of sixteen students, whose
total is steadily diminishing. College evening-classes are held for the
benefit of those who must work by day; and charges are exceedingly
moderate, the admission fee being 10_s._ 6_d._ The Society
proposes, they say, to give it up. It may be wanted half a century
hence. [Footnote: An annual report is published. Those curious on the
subject will consult it.]

West of Fourah College, and separated, _longo intervallo,_ by an
apparently unbroken bush, is Bishop's Court, where the Right Reverend
lives as long as he can or will. Nearer the 'city' lies the deep little
bight called Susan or Sawpit Bay. It is also known as Destruction Bay--a
gloomy name--where ships caught carrying 'bales,' or 'dry goods,' or
'blackbirds,' were broken up. Twenty years ago traces of their ruins
were still seen. Susan is now provided with a large factory: here
'factories' do _not_ manufacture. A host of boats and dug-outs, a
swarm of natives like black ants, a long wooden jetty, and some very
tall houses denote the place where Messrs. Randall and Fisher store and
sell their Kola-nuts. This astringent, the Gora of old writers
(_Sterculia acuminata_), acts in Africa like the Brazilian Guarana,
the Kat (_Catha edulis_) of southern Arabia, the Betel-nut of
Hindostan, and the opium of China, against which certain bigots, with
all the presumption of utter ignorance, have been, and still are, waging
an absurd war. Sa Leone exported 3,445_l_. worth of Kola-nuts in
1860; in 1870 10,400_l_.; and, in 1880, 24,422_l_. The demand
therefore increases and will increase. [Footnote: Mr. Griffith says,
'The Mohammedans of Africa have a singular belief that if they die with
a portion of this nut in their stomach their everlasting happiness is
secured.' This must be some fanciful Christian tale. Amongst them,
however, the red Kola, when sent to the stranger, denotes war, the white
Kola peace.]

In Susan Bay there is a good coal-shed with a small supply for the use
of the colonial steamer. A store of compressed coal is on the town-front
and heaps used to lie about King Tom's Point. A hulk was proposed and
refused. It is now intended to increase the quantity, for the benefit of
future companies, especially the 'Castle Line,' which talks of sending
their steamers to Sa Leone. I hope they will so do; more competition is
much wanted. But the coal-depot may prove dangerous. The mineral in the
tropics produces by its exhalations fatal fevers, especially that
exaggerated form of bilious-remittent popularly known as 'Yellow Jack.'
It is certain that in places like West Indian St. Thomas the
neighbourhood of the coal-sheds is more unhealthy, without apparent
reason, than the sites removed from it.

And now we reach Freetown proper, which may be called Cathedral-Town or
Jail-Town. At a distance the 'Liverpool' or 'London of West Africa,' as
the lieges wildly entitle it, is not unpicturesque; but the style of
beauty is that of a baronial castle on the Rhine with an unpensioned
proprietor, ruinous and tumbledown. After Las Palmas and Santa Cruz it
looks like a dingy belle who has seen better and younger days; and who,
moreover, has forgotten her paint. She has suffered severely from the
abolition of the export slave-trade, in whose palmy times she supplied
many a squadron, and she will not be comforted for the loss.

The colours of the houses are various; plain white is rare, and the
prevailing tints are the light-brick of the fresh laterite and the dark
rusty ochre of the old. But all are the same in one point, the mildewed,
cankered, gangrened aspect, contrasting so unfavourably with the
whitewashed port-towns of the Arabs. The upper stories of wood-work
based on masonry, the fronting piazzas or galleries, the huge
plank-balconies, and the general use of shingle roofs--in fact, the
quantity of tinder-timber, reminding one of olden Cairo, are real risks:
some of the best houses have been destroyed by fire; and, as in
Valparaiso and the flue-warmed castles of England, it is only a question
of time when the inmates will be houseless. Thanks to the form of
ground, the townlet is well laid out, with a gradual rake towards the
bay. But there is no marine parade, and the remarkably uneven
habitations crowd towards the water-front, like those of Eastern ports,
thinning off and losing style inland. The best are placed to catch the
'Doctor,' or sea-breeze: here, as at Zanzibar, the temperature out of
the wind becomes unendurable.

Freetown lies upon a gentle declivity, a slope of laterite and diluvium
washed down from the higher levels. The ground is good for drainage, but
the soft and friable soil readily absorbs the deluging torrents of rain,
and as readily returns them to the air in the shape of noxious
vapours. The shape is triangular. The apex is 'Tower Hill,' so named
from a ruined martello, supposed to have been built by the Dutch, and
till lately used for stores. The barracks, which lodge one of the West
India regiments, are six large blocks crowning the hill-crest and girt
with a low and loopholed wall. In winter, or rather in the December
summer, the slopes are clad in fine golden stubbles, the only spectacle
of the kind which this part of the coast affords. Though not more than
four hundred feet or so above sea-level, the barracks are free from
yellow fever; and in the years when the harbour-town has been almost
depopulated the only fatal cases were those brought up from
below. Moreover, the disease did not spread. The officers' quarters,
with cool and lofty rooms, twenty feet high, are surrounded by shady and
airy piazzas or verandahs, where the wind, when there is any, must find
its way. For many years they had _jalousies_ and half-windows
instead of glass, which forced the inmates to sit in outer darkness
during tornadoes and the Rains. The garrison, like the town, owes an
eternal debt of gratitude to Governor J. Pope Henessy. Seeing the main
want of Sa Leone, he canalised in 1872, with the good aid of
Mr. Engineer Jenkins, a fine fountain rising below 'Heddle's Farm,'
enabling the barracks to have a swimming-bath and the townsfolk to lay
on, through smaller pipes, a fair supply of filtered water. For this
alone he amply deserves a statue; but colonies, like republics, are
rarely grateful.

The sea-front of the triangle, whose lowest houses are sprinkled by the
wave-spray, is bounded on the east by Battery Point. It is a grassy flat
with a few fine trees, and benches ever black with the native
lounger. Here the regimental band plays on Wednesdays; an occasional
circus pitches its tents, and 'beauty and fashion' flock to see and be
seen. The many are on foot; the few use Bath-chairs or _machilas_,
--_fautenils_ hung to a pole. The only carriage in the place
belongs to the Governor, and he lost no time in losing one of
his horses. Riding is apparently unknown.

The Battery is the old Fort Falconbridge. A worm-eaten gun or two, far
more dangerous to those in rear than to those in front, rises _en
barbette._ The affair would fall in half an hour before the mildest
of gunboats. Yet by fortifying three points at an expense of some 6,000L
to 8,000L Sa Leone might be decently defended. The first is Lighthouse
Point, along which ships entering and leaving perforce must run; the
second would be King Tom's Point, flanking the harbour-front; and the
third would be Johnson's Battery, where salutes are now fired, a work
lying above Government House upon a spur of Barrack Hill. Needless to
say all three would want the heaviest guns.

Running the eye west of the Battery, a few wooden houses or sheds, some
of them overhanging the dwarf cliff, the black rocks, and the red-yellow
sands, lead to Taylor's warehouses, a huge pile of laterite still
unfinished. Here the traditional 'man and boy' may sometimes be seen
working in the cooler and more comfortable hours. Beyond it, on a level
with the water, stands the new camber, where we shall land. Then comes
the huge block built by Mr. Charles Heddle, of Hoy, who by grace of a
large fortune, honourably made at Freetown, has become proprietor of a
noble chateau and broad lands in France. It has now been converted into
the Crown commissariat-store. The sea-frontage has a clear fall of
eighty feet, whereas, from the street behind the wooden upper story, it
appears below the average height. Very mean are the custom-house and
adjoining coal-shed. 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. No wonder that the new harbour-works have
cost already 70,000_l_., of which 50,637_l_. are still owed,
and that the preposterous wharfage-duty is 10_s_. per ton. To avoid
this and the harbour-dues, ships anchor, whenever they safely can, in
the offing, where the shoals are Nature's breakwaters. West of the
quarry-hollow, in my day a little grassy square, are the old
Commissariat-quarters, now a bonded warehouse. This building is also a
long low cottage viewed from inland, and a tall, grim structure seen
from the sea. On a higher level stands St. George's, once a church, but
years ago promoted to a cathedral-dignity, making Freetown proud as
Barchester Towers. We shall presently pass it and its caricature, the
pert little Wesleyan church to its east. The extreme west of the
triangle-base is occupied by the gaol. No longer a 'barn-like structure
faced by a black wall,' it is a lengthy scatter of detached buildings,
large enough to accommodate half the population, and distinguished by
its colour, a light ashen grey. Behind this projecting site lies King
Jimmy's Bridge, a causeway through whose central arch a stream of
sparkling water winds its way seawards.

Below King Jimmy's Bridge is the only antiquity which Sa Leone
knows. Here, according to some, Sir Francis Drake, the discoverer of
California and her gold, the gallant knight of whom the Virgin Queen
said that 'his actions did him more honour than his title,' left his
name upon the buttress of primitive rock. Others have (correctly?)
attributed the inscription to Sir John Hawkins, the old naval worthy
whose name still blossoms in the dust at Sa Leone as the 'first slaver.'
The waters and the tramp of negro feet have obliterated the epigraph,
which was, they say, legible forty years ago. The rock is covered with
griffonages; and here some well-cut square letters easily read--

M. A. RVITER.
VICE-AMIRALL-
VAN-HOLLANT.

Near this 'written rock' is King James's Well, a pure stream which in
former times supplied the shipping.

The scene in the harbour is by no means lively, although the three or
four dismantled merchant-craft, dreary as the settlement, have now
disappeared. A little white-painted colonial steamer, a dwarf
paddle-wheeler, the _Prince of Wales,_ lies moping and solitary off
foul Krutown Bay. At times a single gunboat puts in an appearance. There
may be a French steamer with a blue anchor on a white flag bound for
Sherbro, or the Isles de Los; and a queer Noah's Ark kind of craft,
belonging to Mr. Broadhurst, a partner in Randall and Fisher's, runs to
the river Scarcies and others. These are the grandees of the waters. The
middle class is composed of Porto Loko [Footnote: Porto Loko--not
Locco--derives its name from a locust-tree, whose fruit is an ingredient
in 'palaver sauce;' and Winterbottom (I.4), who calls it Logo, derives
the word from the land of that name.] boats, which affect the streams
and estuaries. Originally canoes, they were improved to the
felucca-type of the Portuguese, and the hulls reminded Cameron and
myself of the Zanzibarian 'Mtepe.' A strong standing-awning of wood
occupies the sternward third; the masts number two or three, with a
short jib, and there are six oars on each side, worked by men on foot,
who alternately push and pull--a thoroughly novel process in rowing.
The Sa Leone boats which carry passengers on shore are carefully named,
but apparently never washed: they want the sunshades of the Bathurst
craft. The commonalty of the sea is the host of dug-outs, in which the
sable fisherman, indolently thrown back, props his feet upon the
gunwales and attaches a line to each big toe. These men land little more
than enough for their own subsistence, and the market-supply is
infinitesimal compared with what industry and proper appliances might
produce.

The background of the 'city' is a green curtain of grass and
fruit-trees, amongst which predominate the breadfruit, an early
introduction; the prim dark mango, somewhat like an orange multiplied by
two, or three, and palms, ever present in equinoctial lowlands. On the
heights above the settlement there is room for cool country-seats, where
European exiles might live comparatively safe from fever and the more
deadly dysentery. A white lodge peeping from a densely wooded
mountain-flank, originally Carnes's Farm and now Heddle's Farm, was
called Mount Oriel (Oriole?) by Mrs. Melville, the wife of a pensioned
judge of the Mixed Customs Court, who lived here seven years. Her sketch
of a sojourn upon the Lioness Range is not tempting: young gentlemen who
intend leading brides to the deadly peninsula should hide the book from
their fair intendeds. I cannot, however, but admire the 'word-painting'
of the scenery and the fidelity of those descriptions concerning which I
have a right to form an opinion. The book [Footnote: A Residence in
Sierra Leone. By a Lady. London: Murray, 1849.] was edited by the late
Mrs. Caroline Norton.

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