To the Gold Coast for Gold | Page 3

TO THE GOLD COAST FOR GOLD.
CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY: TRIESTE TO LISBON.
The glory of an explorer, I need hardly say, results not so much from
the extent, or the marvels of his explorations, as from the consequences
to which they lead. Judged by this test, my little list of discoveries has
not been unfavoured of fortune. Where two purblind fever-stricken men
plodded painfully through fetid swamp and fiery thorn-bush over the
Zanzibar-Tanganyika track, mission-houses and schools may now be
numbered by the dozen. Missionaries bring consuls, and consuls bring
commerce and colonisation. On the Gold Coast of Western Africa,
whence came the good old 'guinea,' not a washing-cradle, not a pound
of quicksilver was to be found in 1862; in 1882 five mining companies
are at work; and in 1892 there will be as many score.
I had long and curiously watched from afar the movement of the
Golden Land, our long-neglected El Dorado, before the opportunity of

a revisit presented itself. At last, in the autumn of 1881, Mr. James
Irvine, of Liverpool, formerly of the West African 'Oil-rivers,' and now
a large mine-owner in the Gulf of Guinea, proposed to me a tour with
the object of inspecting his concessions, and I proposed to myself a
journey of exploration inland. The Foreign Office liberally gave me
leave to escape the winter of Trieste, where the ferocious Bora
(nor'-nor'-easter) wages eternal war with the depressing and distressing
Scirocco, or south-easter. Some One marvelled aloud and said, 'You are
certainly the first that ever applied to seek health in the "genial and
congenial climate" of the West African Coast.' But then Some One had
not realised the horrors of January and February at the storm-beaten
head of the ever unquiet Adriatic.
Thus it happened that on November 18,1881, after many adieux and au
revoirs, I found myself on board the Cunard s.s. Demerara (Captain C.
Jones), bound for 'Gib.' My wife was to accompany me as far as
Hungarian Fiume.
The Cunard route to 'Gib' is decidedly roundabout. We began with a
run to Venice, usually six hours from the Vice-Queen of the Adriatic: it
was prolonged to double by the thick and clinging mist-fog. The
sea-city was enjoying her usual lethargy of repose after the excitement
of the 'geographical Carnival,' as we called the farcical Congress of last
September. She is essentially a summering place. Her winter is
miserable, neither city nor houses being built for any but the finest of
fine weather; her 'society'-season lasts only four months from St.
Stephen's Day; her traveller-seasons are spring and autumn. We found
all our friends either in bed with bad colds, or on the wing for England
and elsewhere; we inhaled a quant. suff. of choking vapour, even in the
comfortable Britannia Hotel; and, on the morning of the 23rd, we
awoke to find ourselves moored alongside of the new warehouses on
the new port of Hungarian, or rather Croatian, Fiume.
Fiume had made prodigious strides since I last saw her in 1878; and she
is gradually taking the wind out of the sails of her sister-rival. While
old Tergeste wastes time and trouble upon futile questions of policy,
and angry contrasts between Germans and Slavs, and Italians and

Triestines, Fiume looks to the main chance. The neat, clean, and
well-watered little harbour-city may be called a two-dinner-a-day place,
so profuse is her hospitality to strangers. Here, too, we once more
enjoyed her glorious outlook, the warm winter sun gilding the
snowy-silvery head of Monte Maggiore and raining light and life upon
the indigo-tinted waters of Fiume Bay. Next to Naples, I know nothing
in Europe more beautiful than this ill-named Quarnero. We saw a shot
or so of the far-famed Whitehead torpedo, which now makes
twenty-one miles an hour; and on Nov. 25 we began to run down the
Gulf en route for Patras.
It was a pleasure to emerge from the stern and gloomy Adriatic; and
nothing could be more lovely than the first evening amongst the Ionian
Islands. To port, backed by the bold heights of the Grecian sea-range,
lay the hoary mount, and the red cliffs, 780 feet high, of Sappho's Leap,
a never-forgotten memory. Starboard rose bleak Ithaca, fronting the
black mountain of Cephalonia, now bald and bare, but clothed with
dark forests till these were burnt down by some mischievous malignant.
Whatever of sterility deformed the scene lay robed under a glory of
colour painted with perfect beauty by the last smile of the sun. Earth
and air and sea showed every variety of the chromatic scale, especially
of rose-tints, from the tenderest morning blush of virgin snow to the
vinous evening flush upon the lowlands washed by the purple wave.
The pure translucent vault never ceased to shift its chameleon-like hues,
that ranged