chapter iii

. The identification with the Rio de Onro is that of Bowdich (p. 505). Another Rio de Ouro was visited in 1860 by Captain George Peacock (before alluded to), 'having a French frigate under his orders.' The 'River of Gold' of course would become a favourite and a banal name.]

In 1470 João de Santarem and Pero d'Escobar, knights of the King, sailed past Cape Falmas, discovered the islands of São Thomé and Annobom (January 1, 1471); and, on their return homewards, found a trade in gold-dust at the village of Sama (Chamah) and on the site which we miscall 'Elmina.' [Footnote: This form of the word, a masculine article with a feminine noun, cannot exist in any of the neo-Latin languages. In Italian and Spanish it would be La Mina, in Portuguese A Mina. The native name is Dina or Edina.] During the same year Fernan' Gomez, a worthy of Lisbon, bought a five years' monopoly of the gold-trade from the King, paying 44_l._ 9_s._ par annum, and binding himself to explore, every year, 300 miles down coast from Sierra Leone. One of these expeditions landed at 'Elmina' and discovered Cape Catherine in south latitude 1º 50' and west longitude (Gr.) 9º 2'. The rich mines opened at Little Kommenda, or Aprobi, led to the building of the Fort São Jorje da Mina, by Diego d'Azembuja, sent out (A.D. 1481) to superintend the construction. But about 1622 the falling in of some unbraced and untimbered shafts and the deaths of many miners induced Gweffa, the King, to 'put gold in Fetish,' making it an accursed thing; and it has not been worked since that time.

Thus Portugal secured to herself the treasures which made her the wealthiest of European kingdoms. But when she became a province of Spain, under D. Philip II., her Eastern conquests were systematically neglected in favour of the Castilian colonies that studded the New World. The weak Lusitanian garrisons were massacred on the Gold Coast, as in other parts of Africa; and the Hollanders, the 'Water-beggars,' who had conquered their independence from Spain, proceeded to absorb the richest possessions of their quondam rivals. 'Elmina,' the capital, fell into Dutch hands (1637), and till 1868 Holland retained her forts and factories on the Gold Coast.

In their turn the English and the French, who had heard of the fabulous treasures of the Joliba valley and the Tinbukhtu mart, began to claim their share. As early as 1551 Captain Thomas Wyndham touched at the Gold Coast and brought home 150 lbs. of the precious dust. The first English company for exploring the Gambia River sent out (1618) their agent, Richard Thompson. This brave and unfortunate explorer was rancorously opposed by the Portuguese and eventually murdered by his own men. He was followed (1620) by Richard Jobson, to whom we owe the first account of the Gambia River. He landed at various points, armed with mercury, aqua regia (nitric acid), large crucibles, and a 'dowsing' or divining rod; [Footnote: A form of this old and almost universal magical instrument, worked by electricity, has, I am told, been lately invented and patented in the United States.] washed the sands and examined the rocks even beyond the Falls of Barraconda. After having often been deceived, as has occurred to many prospectors since his day, he determined that gold never occurs in low fertile wooded lands, but in naked and barren hills, which embed it in their reddish ferruginous soil. Hence it was long and erroneously determined that bare rocks in the neighbourhood of shallow alluvia characterise rich placers, and that the wealthiest mining-regions are poor and stunted in vegetation. California and Australia, the Gold Coast and South Africa, are instances of the contrary. Wásá, however, confirms the old opinion that the strata traversed by lodes determine the predominating metal; as quartz produces gold; hard blue slate, lead; limestone, green-stone and porphyry, copper; and granite, tin. [Footnote: Page 17, _A Treatise on Metalliferous Minerals and Mining_, by D. C. Davies. London, Crosby and Co., 1881. The volume is handy and useful to explorers.]

After twenty days' labour Jobson succeeded in extracting 12 lbs. from a single site. He declares that at length he 'arrived at the mouth of the mine itself, and found gold in such abundance as surprised him with joy and admiration.' Unfortunately he leaves us no notice of its position; it is probably lost, like many of the old Brazilian diggings. The Gambia River still exports small quantities of dust supposed to have been washed in the Ghauts, or sea-subtending ridges, of the interior. Most of it, however, finds its way to the wealthier and more prosperous French colony.

Whilst the English chose the Gambia the French preferred Senegal, where they founded (1626) 'St. Louis,' called after Louis XIV. The Sieur Brue, Director-General of the Senegal Company, made a second journey of discovery in 1698, and reached with great difficulty the gold-mines of desert and dreary Bambúk. There he visited the principal districts, and secured specimens of what he calls the _ghingan_, or golden earth. He proposed a third incursion, but the absolute apathy of his countrymen proved an insuperable obstacle.

M. Golberry describes Bambúk in gloomy and sombre colours. Its gold is distributed amongst low ranges of peeled and sterile hills. Probably this results from fires and disforesting. It occurs in the shape of spangles, grains, and _pépites_ (nuggets), whose size increases with the depth of the digging. In the Matakon mine the dust adhered to fragments of iron, emery, and lapis lazuli, from which it was easily detached and washed. The less valuable Semayla placer produced dust in a hard reddish loam, mixed with still more refractory materials; it was crushed in mortars with rude wooden dollies or with grain-pestles. The pits, six feet in diameter, reached a depth of from ten to twelve yards, where they were stopped by a bed of hard reddish marle; this the Frenchman held to be the hanging wall of a much richer lode. The people used ladders, but they neglected to collar or brace the mouth, and the untimbered pit-sides often fell in; hence fatal accidents, attributed to the 'earth-spirits.' They held gold to be a capricious elf, and when a rich vein suddenly ran barren they cried out, 'There! he is off!'

In later days Mungo Park drew attention by his famous first journey (1795-97) to the highlands of the Mandingoes (Mandenga-land), and revived interest in the provinces of Shronda, Konkodu, Dindiko, Bambúk, and Bambarra. Here the natives collect dust by laborious washings of detrital sand. His fatal second expedition (1805) produced an unfinished journal, which, however, gives the amplest and most interesting notices concerning the gold-production of the region he traversed. My space compels me to refer readers to the original. [Footnote: Murray's edition of 1816, vol. i, p. 40, and vol. ii. p. 751.]

The traveller Caillié (1827), after crossing the Niger _en route_ to Tinbukhtu, passed south of the Bouré province, in the valley of the Great River; and here he reports an abundance of gold. As in the districts visited by Park, it is all alluvial and washed out of the soil. The dust, together with native cloth, wax, honey, cotton and cattle, finds its way to the coast, where it is bartered for beads, amber and coral, calicoes and firearms. The gold-mines of Bouré were first visited and described by Winwood Reade. [Footnote: _Coomassie_, &c., p. 126.]

The peninsula of Sierra Leone is not yet proved to be auriferous. Here stray Moslems, mostly Mandengas, occasionally bring down the Melakori River ring-gold and dust from the interior. The colonists of Liberia assert that at times they have come upon a pocket which produced fifty dollars; the country-people also occasionally offer gold for sale. From the Bassam coast middle-men travel far inland and buy the metal from the bushmen. Near Grand Bassam free gold in quartz-reefs near the shore has been reported.

We now reach the Gold Coast proper, which amply deserves its glorious golden name. I have shown that the whole seaboard of West Africa, between it and Morocco, produces more or less gold; here, however, the precious metal comes down to the very shore and is washed upon the sands. Its length from the Assini boundary-line to the Volta [Footnote: