the Ancobra valley; and it is best known for the seaboard.] an excellent
authority, also places it at the river-mouth. According to some it was
taken in early days by the French, who still hold it. Captain Ellis has
transferred to this site the story of Fort Eguira, an inland, or rather
up-stream, work, destroyed, as Dr. Reynhaut and others tell us, in an
'elendige manier' (a piteous way).

The gallant Mynheer commanding fought the natives till his men were shot
down, after using 'rock-gold' (nuggets) for bullets. He rolled sundry
powder-barrels under the palaver-hall, and stationed there a boy with a
match to be applied when he stamped on the floor. He then flung open the
gates, hung out a flag of trace, and invited the bloodthirsty savages, who
were bent on killing him by torture, to take the hoard of gold for which
the attack was made. When all crowded the great room he reproached them
with their greed of gain, gave the sign, and blew them and himself into
eternity. I am told by a good authority that the natives, whose memories
are tenacious on some points, will not show to strangers the ruins which
cost their forefathers so dear.

The last village on the sands is Kukakun, where the wreck of a schooner
saddens the scene. Within a few hundred yards of Akromasi we bent abruptly
eastward and exchanged the sands for the usual stiff soil of red clay. The
gut is formed by the point-bluff and a southern block, and the surface is
covered with dense second-growth--pandanus, the false sugar-cane, ferns
large and small, and the sloth-tree, the Brazilian _ubá_ or Preguiça, with
tall, thin white trunk and hanging palmated leaves. The African palm-birds
(orioles of the _Merulidæ_ family), whose two colours, red (_ntiblii_) and
golden yellow (_enadsi_), apparently divide them into as many fighting
factions, give a touch, a bright colour to the dulness, and chatter over
their pensile homes, which strangers would mistake for cocoa-nuts.