attributed it to the 'fetish' of some unfriend; but it turned out to be
Guinea-worm, a malady from which many are suffering this season. We parted
upon the most friendly terms and arranged to meet again.

Both of us came to the conviction that the 'Izrah Concession' will pay,
and pay well. But instead of the routine shafting and tunnelling it must
be treated by hydraulicking and washing away the thirty feet of auriferous
soil, whose depth covers the reef. The bed of the Fía will supply the
water, and a force-pump, worked by men, or preferably by steam-power. Thus
we shall keep the mine dry: otherwise it will be constantly flooded.
Moreover, the land seems to be built for ditching and sluicing, and the
trenches will want only a plank-box with a metal grating at the head. I
can only hope that the operations will be conducted by an expert hand who
knows something of the Californian or the Australian diggings.

On February 8 we left Arábokasu, intending to march upon the 'Inyoko
Concession.' Our guide and people, however, seemed to change every five
minutes what they might call their 'minds,' and at last they settled to
try the worst, but to us the most interesting line. At 8 A.M. we struck
into the bush _viâ_ a heap of huts, the 'Matinga' village, at the
south-eastern corner of the fine mineral property. Here 'women's washings'
again appeared. At the Achyáko settlement we crossed the two branches of
the Fía. One measures twenty feet wide and two feet six inches deep in the
dry season; it runs a knot an hour, and thus the supply is ample. About a
mile further on we were carried across the Gwabisa stream, four feet wide
by eighteen inches deep, running over a bed of quartz-pebbles. This ended
the 'true coast.'

The 'false coast' began close to the little settlement known as Ashankru.
It shows a fine quartz-reef, striking north fourteen degrees east. The