We may fairly predict a future for Axim. The town is well situated to
catch the sea-breeze. The climate is equatorial, but exceptionally
healthy, save after the rainy season, which here opens a month or six
weeks earlier than on the leeward coast. The downfall must, however, have
diminished since the times when 'the _blacks_ will tell you the wet
weather lasts eleven months and twenty-nine days in the year.' The rains
now begin with April and end in September. The position is south of the
thermal equator (22º R. = 81 5º F.), which runs north lat. 6º on the
western coast, 15º in the interior, and 10º on the eastern seaboard.
[Footnote: Berghaus, following Humboldt, places the probable equator of
temperature (80º 16') in N. lat. 4º, or south of Axim, rising to N. lat.
13º in Central and in Eastern Africa] Add that the average daily
temperature is 75º-80º (F.), rising to 96º in the afternoon and falling
after midnight to 70º, and that the wet season on the seaboard is perhaps
the least sickly. We were there in January-March, during an unusually hot
and dry season, following the Harmatan and the Smokes and preceding the
tornadoes and the rains; yet I never felt an oppressive day,--nothing
worse than Alexandria or Trieste in early August. The mornings and
evenings were mostly misty; the moons were clear and the nights were
tolerable. An excessive damp, which mildews and decays
everything--clothes, books, metals, man--was the main discomfort. But we
were living, as it were, in the open, and we neglected morning and evening
fires. This will not be the case when solid and comfortable houses shall
be built. The improvement of lodging and diet accounts for the better
health of Anglo-Africans, as of Anglo-Indians, in the present day. Our
predecessors during the early nineteenth century died of bad shelter, bad
food, and bad drink.

The town, built upon a flat partly formed by cutting away the mounds and
hillocks of red clay, was well laid out by Mr. Sam, the