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To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative by Verney Lovett Cameron;Sir Richard Francis Burton
page 69 of 310 (22%)
of the Besáon the ground rises and bears the wall of trees seen from the
offing. There is, therefore, plenty of building-room, and long heads have
bought up all the land in that direction. Mr. Macarthy, of the School of
Mines, owns many concessions in this part of the country.

All the evils here noted can easily be remedied. As in the Cairo of
Mohammed Ali's day, every house-holder should be made responsible for the
cleanliness of his surroundings. The Castle-prison, too, rarely lodges
fewer than a dozen convicts. These men should be taken away from
'shot-drill' and other absurdities of the tread-mill type, which diversify
pleasant, friar-like lives of eating and drinking, smoking, sleeping, and
chatting with one another. Unfortunately, humanitarianism does not allow
the lash without reference to head-quarters. Labour must therefore be
light; still it would suffice to dig up the boulders from the main
thoroughfares, to clean the suburbs, and to open the mouths of the fetid
and poisonous lagoons.

Mr. William M. Grant, the clever and active agent of our friend Mr. James
Irvine, came on board to receive us, and housed us and our innumerable
belongings in his little bungalow facing 'Water Street.' We found life at
Axim pleasant enough. Even in these days of comparative barbarism, or at
best of incipient civilisation, the station is not wholly desert. The
agents of the several firms are hospitable in the extreme. Generally also
a manager of the inner mines, or a new comer, enlarges the small circle.
There is a flavour of England in 'A. B. and Co., licensed dealers in wine
and spirits, wholesale and retail,' inscribed upon boards over the
merchants' doors; also in the lawn-tennis, which I have seen played in a
space called by courtesy a square: Cameron, by-the-bye, has hired it,
despite some vexatious local opposition, and it will be a fine _locale_
for the Axim Hotel now being opened. Sunday is known as a twenty-four
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