To The Gold Coast for Gold: A Personal Narrative. Vol. II

Now began the notable falling-off, which reached its maximum next year:—

M. Dahse assumes the annual average to be in round numbers, 126,000l.

The official returns of imported silver from the Coast show:—

Totals of gold and silver:—

I was lately asked by an illustrious geologist and man of science, how it came to pass that the Gold Coast, if so rich, has not been worked before this time. These notes will afford a sufficient reply.

b. The Kong Mountains.

This range, which has almost disappeared from the maps, may have taken its name either from the town of Kong on the southern versant, or it may be a contraction of the Kongkodu, the mountain-land described by Mungo Park. Messieurs J. Zweifel and M. Moustier, [Footnote: Expédition, C. A. Verminck, Voyage aux Sources du Niger. Marseille, 1880.] who did not reach the Niger sources in 1879, explain 'Kong' as the Kissi name of the line which trends from north-west to south-east, and which divides Koronko-land from Kono-land. When nearing their objective they sighted the Kong-apex, Mount Daro, measuring 1,240 mètres. Older travellers make it a latitudinal chain running nearly east-west, with its centre about the meridian of Cape Coast Castle, and extending 500 to 600 miles on a parallel of north latitude 7º-8º. Westward it bends north behind Cape Palmas, and, like the Ghauts of Hindostan, follows the line of seaboard. I have before noticed the traditions of Mount Geddia, an occidental Kilima-njáro. About the parallel of Sierra Leone the feature splits into a network of ranges, curves, and zigzags, which show no general trend. The eastern faces here shed to the Niger, the western to the various streams between the Rokel-Seli, the Gambia, and the Senegal; and the last northern counterforts sink into the Sahará Desert. The western versant supplies the gold of Senegambia, the southern that of Ashanti and Wásá. The superficial dust is washed down by rains, floods, and rivers; and the dykes and veins of quartz, mostly running north-south, are apparently connected with those of the main range.

That such a chain must exist is proved by the conduct of the Gold Coast streams. The Ancobra, for instance, which often rises and falls from twenty to forty feet in twenty-four hours, suggests that its sources spring from an elevated plane at no great distance from the sea. The lands south of the Kong Mountains are grassy and hilly with extensive plains. This is known through the 'Donko slaves,' common on the coast. Many of them come from about Salagha, the newly-opened mart upon the Upper Volta; they declare that the land breeds ostriches and elephants, cattle and camels, horses and asses. Moreover, it is visited by the northern peoples who cross the Sahará. I have already noticed the grass-lands of Gyáman.

Captain Clapperton, on his second journey, setting out from Badagry to Busa (Boussa), crossed a hill-range which would correspond with the Kong. It is described as about eighty miles broad, and is said to extend from behind Ashanti to Benin. The traveller, who estimated the culminating point not to exceed 2,600 feet, found the rugged passes hemmed in by denticulated walls and tons of granite, 600 to 700 feet high, and sometimes overhanging the path. The valleys varied in breadth from a hundred yards to half a mile. A comparatively large population occupied the mountain-recesses, where they planted fine crops of yams, millet, and cotton. The strangers were made welcome at every settlement. Ascending hill after hill, they came to Chaki, a large town on the very summit of the ridge. The caboceer had a house and a stock of provisions ready for his guests, put many questions, and earnestly pressed them to rest for two or three days. When the whole chain was crossed they fell into the plains of 'Yaruba' (Yoruba).

The next eye-witness is Mr. John Duncan, who visited Dahome in 1845. King Gezo allowed him a guard of a hundred men, in order to explore with safety the 'Mahi, or Kong Mountains.' His son and successor was not so generous; he systematically and churlishly refused all travellers, myself included, permission to pass northwards of his capital. The Lifeguardsman found the chain, which is distant more than a hundred miles from Agbóme, differing from his expectations in character, appearance, and even position. The grand, imposing line looked from afar like colossal piles of ruins; a nearer view showed immense blocks, some of them 200 feet long, egg-shaped and lying upon their sides. Nearly all the settlements had chosen the summits, doubtless for defence. Mr. Duncan crossed the whole breadth of these 'Kong Mountains,' and pushed 180 miles beyond them over a level land which must shed to the Niger.

These descriptions denote a range of granite, the rock which forms the ground-floor of the Sierra Leone peninsula and the Gold Coast, possibly varied by syenites and porphyries. It would probably contain, like the sea-subtending mountains of Midian, large veins of eminently metalliferous quartz, outcropping from the surface and forming extensions of the reefs below. From the coast-line the land gradually upslopes towards the spurs of the great dividing ridge; and thus we may fairly expect that the further north we go the richer will become the diggings.

The Kong Mountains are apparently cut through by the Niger south of Iddah, where the true coast begins. Travellers describe the features almost in the words of Clapperton and Denham—the towering masses of granite which contrast so strongly with the southern swamps; upstanding outcrops resembling cathedrals and castellations in ruins; boulders like footballs of enormous dimensions; pyramids a thousand feet high; and solitary cones which rise like giant ninepins. We know too little of the lands lying south-east of the confluence to determine the sequence of the chain, whose counterforts may give rise to the Eastern 'Oil Rivers.' It is not connected with the Peak of Camarones, round which Mr. Cumber, of the Baptist Mission, travelled; and which he determined to be an isolated block. Farther south the Ghauts of Western Africa reappeared as the Serra do Crystal, and fringe the mighty triangle below the Equator. They are suspected to be auriferous in places. An American merchant on the Gaboon River, Captain Lawlin, carried home in 1843-44 a quantity of granular gold brought to him by the country-traders. He returned to his station, prepared to work the metals of the interior; but the people took the alarm, and he failed to find the spot.

Cameron and I, prevented by the late season of our landing from attempting this interesting exploration, were careful to make all manner of enquiries concerning the best point de départ, and if fate prevent our attempting it we shall be happy to see some more favoured traveller succeed. The easiest way would be to march upon Crockerville, two days by the Ancobra River and three by land. The bush-paths, which would require widening for hammocks, lead north through Wásá. There are many villages on the way, and in places provisions can be procured; the people are peaceful and willing to show or to make the path. At Axim I consulted a native guide who knew the Kong village, but not the Kong Mountains. He made the distance six marches to Safwi, where the grass-lands begin; and here he ascended a hillock, seeing nothing but prairies to the north. Eight more stages, a total of fourteen, led him to Gyáman, where he found horses and horsemen. He also knew by hearsay the western route, viâ Apollonian Béin.

c. Native Modes of Working Gold.

In all places, and at all times, gold, probably the metal first used by man, has been worked in the same way. This is a fair evidence of that instinctive faculty which produces a general resemblance of rude stone-implements from England to Australia. There are six methods for 'getting' the precious metal—surfacing or washing; shallow-sinking; sluicing, or removing the earth through natural and artificial channels; deep sinking; tunnelling, and quartz-mining.

The preceding notes show that the natives of the Gold Coast, and of West Africa generally, are adepts at procuring their gold by 'surfacing,' washing with the calabash or wooden bowl the rich alluvial formations that underlie the top-soil. This is the rudest form of machinery, preceding in California the cradle, the torn, and the sluice. Westerns made their pans of brass or copper, about sixteen inches in diameter, and nearly two inches deep in the middle where the gold gravitates. Panning in Africa is women's work, and the process has been described in the preceding pages.

But the natives, as has been shown, can also work quartz, an art well known to the Ancient Egyptians. They either pick up detached pieces showing visible gold, or they sink pits and nibble at the walls of the reefs. But whereas the Nile-peoples pounded the stone in mortars and washed the dust on sloping boards, here the matrix must be laboriously levigated. A handful of broken quartz is placed upon the 'cankey-stone,' with which the gudewife grinds her 'mealies.' It is a slightly hollowed slab of granite or hard conglomerate, some two feet square, sloping away from the worker, and standing upon a rude tripod of tree-branches secured by a lashing of 'tie-tie.' The stuff is then rubbed with a hand-stone not unlike a baker's roll, and a slight deviation is given to it as it moves 'fore and aft.' The reduced stone is caught in a calabash placed at the lower end of the slab. This is usually night-work, and all the dark hours will be wasted in grinding down a cubic foot of stone.

The late M. Bonnat had probably read Mr. Andrew Swanzy's evidence before the House of Commons in 1816: 'Gold is procured in every part of the country; it appears more like an impregnation of the soil than a mine.' His long captivity at Kumasi, where to a certain extent he learned the Oji speech, familiarised him with the native processes; and thus a Frenchman taught Englishmen to work gold in a golden land where they have been domiciled—true fainéants—for nearly three centuries. He came out in the Dries of 1877 with the intention of dredging the Ancobra River where the natives dive for the precious metal. He was working in western Apinto, a province of Wásá, under Kofi Blay, a vassal of King Kwábina Angu, when he was visited (January 1878) by Major-General Wray, B.A., Colonel Lightfoot, and Mr. Hervey, who were curious to see the work. They remained only till the return of the mail-steamer, or about five weeks. The General left with some first-rate sketches; the Colonel caught a fever, which killed him at Madeira; and the Esquire, who bears a name well known in Australia, returned to the Gold Coast for the purpose of writing not unprofitable reports. M. Bonnat was presently informed of the Tákwá Ridge, mines well known for a century at least to Cape Coast Castle, and ever the principal source of the Axim currency. They were still worked in 1875 by the people who drew their stores from Axim. A five-weeks' residence convinced him that they were rich enough to attract capital; he went to Europe, and was successful in raising it. Thus began the Tákwá mines, where, by a kind of irony of Fate, the beginner was buried.

M. Bonnat wisely intended to open operations with wet-working. At Axim I was shown a model flume, made to order after the plans of a M. Boisonnet, or, as he signs himself, 'boisonnet.' He was reported to be a large landed-proprietor who had made a fortune by mining in French Guiana. He proposed for M. Bonnat and himself to secure the monopoly of washing the Protectorate with this flume—a veritable French toy, uselessly complicated, and yet to be used only upon the smallest scale. We must go for our models to California and Australia, not to French Guiana.

The following will be the implements with which the natives of the future must do their work on the Gold Coast:—

The pan begat the cradle, a wooden box on rockers, shaped like the article which gave its name. It measures three feet and a half by eighteen inches, and is provided with a movable hopper and slides. Placed in a sloping position, it is worked to and fro by a perpendicular staff acting as handle, and the grain-gold, a metal seven times heavier than granite, collects where the baby should be. As some flour-gold is here found, the cradle-bottom should be cut with cross-grooves to hold mercury; and the latter must be tempered with sodium or other amalgam.

The cradle begat Long Tom and Broad Tom, the 'tom' proper being the upper box with a grating to keep out the pebbles. 'Long Tom's' body is a wooden trough, from twelve to fourteen feet long by a foot or a foot and a half broad, with ripples, riffles, or cross-bars. There is usually another grating at the lower end to intercept the smaller stones. The machine is fixed in a gently sloping position, at an angle determined by circumstances; the wash-dirt is lifted into the upper end by manual labour; when stiff it must be stirred or shovelled, and a stream of water does the rest. The greater gravity of the gold causes it to be arrested by the riffles. Instead of the bars grooves may be cut and filled with quicksilver. When the sludge is very rich, rough cloths rubbed with mercury, or even sheepskins, the lineal descendants of the Golden Fleece, may be used, 'Broad Tom,' alias the 'Victoria Jenny Lind,' is made about half the length of its long brother: the upper end is only a foot wide, broadening out to three below.

'Tom' begat the sluice, which is of two kinds, natural and artificial. The former is a ditch cut in the floor, with a talus of one to forty or fifty. The bottom, which would soon wear away, is revetted with rough planks and paved with hard stones, weighing ten to twenty pounds, the grain being placed vertically. With a full head of water 400 cubic yards a day can easily be washed. The gold, as usual, gravitates through the chinks to the bottom, and finally is cradled or panned out. It is most efficiently treated when the sluice is long; it demands six times more water than the artificial article, but it wants less manual labour. This last property should recommend it to the Gold Coast. Here, I repeat, machinery must be used as much and manual labour as little as possible.

The artificial or portable box-sluice is a series of troughs each about twelve feet long, like the upper compartment of 'Long Tom.' They are made of half-inch boards, rough from the saw, the lower end being smaller to fit into its prolongation. Each compartment is provided with a loose metal bottom pierced with holes to admit the dust; the true bottom below it has cross-riffles, and above it are bars or gratings to catch the coarser stones. These sluices are mounted on trestles, and the latter are disposed upon a slope determined by the quantity of water: the average fall or grade may be 1 to 50. In Australia four men filling a 'Long Tom,' or raised box-sluice, will remove and wash twenty-four cubic yards of ground per day. When the ore is fine, mercury may be dropped into the upper end of the sluice; and it picks up the particles, 'tailing,' as it goes, before the two metals have run far down. Both stop at the first riffle or resting-place.

The auriferous clays of the Gold Coast are thinly covered with humus, and are not buried, as in Australia, by ten to thirty feet of unproductive top-drift. The whole, therefore, can be run through the sluices before we begin mining the underlying strata. Washing will be easier during the Rains, when the dirt is looser; in the Dries hard and compact stuff must be loosened by the pick and spade or by blasting. There will not be much loss by float-gold, flour-gold, or paint-gold, the latter thus called because it is so fine as to resemble gilding. Spangles and specks are found; but the greater part of the dust is granular, increasing to 'shotty gold.' The natives divide the noble ore into 'dust-gold' and 'mountain-gold.' The latter would consist of nuggets, 'lobs,' or pépites, and of crystals varying in size from a pin's head to a pea. The form is a cube modified to an octahedron and a rhombic dodecahedron. These rich finds are usually the produce of pockets or 'jewellers' shops.' I am not aware if there be any truth in the rule generally accepted: 'The forms of gold are found to differ according to the nature of the underlying rock: if it is slate the grains are cubical; if granite they are flat plates and scales.'

And, lastly, the sluice begat the jet, or hydraulicking proper, which is at present the highest effort of placer-mining. We thus reverse the primitive process which carried the wash-dirt to the water; we now carry the water to the wash-dirt. In California I found the miners washing down loose sandstones and hillocks of clay, passing the stuff through sluices, and making money when the gold averaged only 9d. and even 4d. to the ton. A man could work under favourable circumstances twenty to thirty tons a day. An Australian company, mentioned by Mr. R. Brough Smyth, with 200 inches of water, directed by ten hands, 'hydraulicked' in six days 224,000 cubic feet of dirt. The results greatly vary; in some places a man will remove 200 cubic yards a day, and in others only 50.

Hydraulic mining on the Gold Coast, owing to the conformation of the country, will be a far simpler and less expensive process than in California or Australia. In the latter water has first to be bought, and then to be brought in pipes, flumes, leats, or races from a considerable distance, sometimes extending over forty miles. It is necessary to make a reservoir for a fall. The water then rushes through the flexible hose, and is directed by a nozzle against the face of the excavation. The action is that of a fireman playing upon a burning house. Most works on mining insist upon those reservoirs, and never seem to think of washing from below by the force-pump.

I have shown that the surface of the lands adjoining the Ancobra is a series of hummocks, rises, and falls, sometimes, though rarely, reaching 200 feet; that water abounds, and that it is to be had gratis. In every bottom there is a drain, sometimes perennial, but more often a blind gully or creek, [Footnote: The gully feeds a 'creek,' the creek a river.] which runs only during the Rains, and in the Dries carries at most a succession of pools. Here Norton's Abyssinian tubes, sunk in the bed after it has been carefully worked by the steam-navvy for the rich alluvium underlying the surface, would act like pumps, and dams would form huge tanks. Nor would there be any difficulty in making reservoirs upon the ridge-tops, with launders, or gutters, to collect the rain. Thus work would continue throughout the year, and not be confined, as at present, to the dry season. A pressure of 100 to 200 lbs. per square foot can easily be obtained, and the force of the jet is so great that it will kill a man on the spot. The hose should be of heavy duck, double if necessary, rivetted and strengthened by metal bands or rings—in fact, the crinoline-hose of Australia. Leather would be better, but hard to repair in case of accidents by rats; guttapercha would be expensive, and perhaps thin metal tubes with flexible joints may serve best. The largest hose carried by iron-clads measures 19 to 20 inches in diameter, and is worked by 30 to 40 horse-power. Other vessels have a 15-inch hose worked by manual labour, fifty men changed every ten minutes, and will throw the jet over the royal yards of a first-class man-of-war. The floating power-engines attached to the Dockyard reserves would represent the articles required.

With a diameter of from ten to fifteen inches, and a nozzle of three to four inches, a 'crinoline-hose' will throw a stream a hundred feet high when worked by the simplest steam-power process, and tear down a hill more rapidly than a thousand men with shovels. The cost of washing gravel, sand, and clay did not exceed in our colonies 1d. to 2d. per ton; and thus the working expenses were so small that 4d. worth of gold to the ton of soft stuff paid a fair profit. Lastly, there is little danger to the miner; and this is an important consideration.

It is well known that California was prepared for agriculture and viticulture by 'hydraulicking' and other mining operations. It will be the same with the Gold Coast, whose present condition is that of the Lincolnshire fens and the Batavian swamps in the days of the Romans. Let us only have a little patience, and with patience perseverance, which, 'dear my Lord, keeps honour bright.' The water-jet will soon clear away the bush, washing down the tallest trees; it will level the ground and will warp up the swamp till the surface assumes regular raised lines. We run no risk of covering the face of earth with unproductive clay. Here the ground is wanted only as a base for vegetation; sun and rain do all the rest. And thus we may hope that these luxuriant wastes will be turned into fields of bustling activity, and will tell the tale of Cameron and me to a late posterity.

But gold is not the only metal yielded by the Gold Coast. I have already alluded in the preceding pages to sundry silver-lodes said to have been worked by the old Hollanders. As is well known, there is no African gold without silver, and this fact renders the legend credible. Even in these dullest of dull days 63,337l. worth was the export of 1880. Iron is everywhere, the land is stained red with its oxide; and manganese with cobalt has been observed. I have mentioned that at Akankon my companion showed me a large vein of cinnabar. Copper occurs in small quantities with tin. This metal is found in large veins streaking the granite, according to M. Dahse, who gave me a fine specimen containing some ten and a half per cent. of metal. He has found as much as twelve per cent., when at home 2 to 2-1/2 per cent. pays. [Footnote: 'The present percentage of block-tin derived from all the tin-ore ... of Cornwall is estimated at 2 per cent., or nearly 45 lbs. to the ton of ore.'—Davies, p. 391.] The aspect of the land is diamantiferous; [Footnote: I hear with the greatest pleasure that a syndicate has been formed for working the diamond-diggings of Golconda, a measure advocated by me for many years. Suffice to say here that the Hindús rarely went below 60 feet, because they could not unwater the mine, and that the Brazilian finds his precious stones 280 feet below the surface. Moreover the Indian is the only true diamond: the Brazilian is a good and the Cape a bad natural imitation.] and it has been noticed that a crystal believed to be a diamond has been found in auriferous gravel. In these granitic, gneissose, and quartzose formations topazes, amethysts and sapphires, garnets and rubies, will probably occur, as in the similar rocks of the great Brazilian mining-grounds. The seed-pearl of the Coast-oyster may be developed into a tolerable likeness of the far-famed pear-shaped Margarita of Arabian Katifah, which was bought by Tavernier for the sum, then enormous, of 110,000l.

Pearl-culture is an art now known even to the wild Arab fisherman of the far Midian shore. Lastly, the humble petroleum, precious as silver to the miner-world, has been found in the British Protectorate about New Town.

APPENDIX II. — PART I. — LIST OF BIRDS COLLECTED BY CAPTAIN

BURTON AND COMMANDER CAMERON.

By R. BOWDLER SHARPE, F.L.S.

INDEX.

[Transcriber's Note: This index applies to both volumes I and II of this work. The entries in this text- ebook have only the volume number, and not the page number.]