CH A P T ER II
THE GOLD COAST
Wherein some description of Cape Coast and Accra is given, to whichare
added divers observations on supplies to be obtained there.
CAPE C o a s t C a s t l e and then Accra were the next places of
general interest at which we stopped. The former looks well
from the roadstead, and as if it had very recently been whitewashed.
It is surrounded by low, heavily-forested hills, which
rise almost from the seashore, and the fine mass of its old
castle does not display its dilapidation at a distance. Moreover,
the three stone forts of Victoria, William, and Macarthy,
situated on separate hills commanding the town, add to?
the general appearance of permanent substantialness so
different from the usual ramshackledom of West Coast
settlements. Even when you go ashore and have had time
to recover your senses, scattered by the surf experience,
you find this substantialness a true one, not a mere visual
delusion produced by painted wood as the seeming substantialness
of Sierra Leone turns out to be when you
get to close quarters with it. It causes one some menta
effort to grasp the fact that Cape Coast has been in
European hands for centuries, but it requires a most unmodern
power of credence to realise this of any other settlement
on the whole western seaboard until you have the
pleasure of seeing the beautiful city of San. Paul de Loanda,
f a r away down south, past the Congo.
My experience of Cape Coast on this occasion was one
of the hottest, but one of the pleasantest I have ever been
through on the Gold Coast. The former attribute was due