Any one who has eyes to see can assure himself that Axim is the threshold
of the Gold-region. It abounds in diorite, a rock usually associated with
the best paying lodes. After heavy showers the naked eye can note spangles
of the precious metal in the street-roads. You can pan it out of the
wall-swish. The little stream-beds, bone-dry throughout the hot season,
roll down, during the rains, a quantity of dark arenaceous matter, like
that of Taranaki, New Zealand, and the 'black sand' of Australia, which
collects near the sea in stripes and patches. The people believe that
without it gold never occurs; and, if they collect the common yellow sand,
it is to extract from it the darker material. If the stuff does not answer
the magnet, it is probably schorl (tourmaline), hornblende, or dark
quartz. Strangers have often mistaken this emery-like rock for tin, which
occurs abundantly in the northern region. It is simply titaniferous iron,
iserine, pleonaste, ilmenite [Footnote: Or peroxide of iron, with 8 to 23
per cent, of blue oxide of titanium.] and degraded itabirite, the iron and
quartz formation so called in the Brazil; and it is the same mineral which
I found so general throughout the gold and silver fields of neglected
Midian. It is found striating white sandstone about Tákwá and other places
in the interior. The surface-stone is decomposed by the oxide of iron, and
thus the precious dust with its ingrained gold is dissolved and separated
from it. At a greater depth the itabirite will be found solid; and the
occurrence of these oldest crystalline formations in large layers is a
hopeful sign. When Colonel Bolton was interested in the Gold Coast
diggings I advised him to send for a few tons of this metal, and to test
it as 'pay-dirt.' A barrelful was forwarded from the coast to the Akankon
Company: it was probably thrown away without experiment.

At Axim, as at Cape Coast Castle and other parts of the shore, women may
be seen gold-gathering even on the sea-sands. They rarely wash more than