always be disembarked at Axim, and, if necessary, carried along the beach
to the mouth of the Ebumesu, and thence by boat to the tramway from that
river to the mine.' This last statement is quite correct.

All the Aximites described the Ebumesu bars as practically impassable.
Cameron and I agreed that the only way of entering them is by running the
boat ashore, unloading her, and warping her round the point, as we shall
afterwards do at Prince's. But the best line to the Izrah concession has
not yet been discovered. I strongly impressed the necessity of careful
search upon Mr. A. A. Robertson, the traffic-manager of the Company. For
the present I hold the surf along shore and the Ebumesu bar to be equally
dangerous. The land-tongue between the two streams is the favourite haunt
of mosquitoes and sand-flies, and it produces nothing save mud and
mangroves, miasma and malaria. Yet here in 1873-74 loyal and stout-hearted
King Blay defended himself against the whole Apollonian coast, which
actively sympathised with the Ashantis. [Footnote: Captain Brackenbury,
vol. ii, p. 29, _The Ashanti War_, &c., gives an account of King Blay
fighting the Ashantis on the Ebumesu.] He was at last relieved by the
Wásás (Wassaws) coming to his side; and now he has little to fear. He can
put some 5,000 musketeers into the field; and, during the late Ashanti
scare, he offered to aid us with 7,000, if we could supply the extras with
arms and ammunition.

When the 'Queen of Shades' arose, and it became too dark to see the world,
we halted at the Sensyéré village, and found good sleeping-quarters in the
guest-house of the headman, Bato. Fortunately we had brought mattresses.
The standing four-poster of the country offers only cross-planks covered
with the thinnest matting. As the ancient joke of many a lugubrious
African traveller says, it combines bed and board. Next morning, despite
the chilly damp and the 'old-woman-cannot-see,' as the Scotch mist is here