to the climate, the latter to my kind friends, Mr. Batty, and
Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Kemp. I was taken round the grand
stone-built houses with their high stone-walled yards and
sculpture-decorated gateways, built by the merchants of the
last century and of the century before, and through the great
rambling stone castle with its water-tanks cut in the solid
rock beneath it, and its commodious accommodation for
slaves awaiting shipment, now almost as obsolete as the guns
it mounts, but not quite so, for these cool and roomy chambers
serve to house the native constabulary and their extensive
families.
This being done, I was taken up an unmitigated hill, on
whose summit stands Fort William, a pepper-pot-like structure
now used as a lighthouse. Our peregrinations having been
carried on under a fancy temperature, I was inclined to drink
in the beauty of this building from a position at its base, and
was looking round for a shady spot to sit down in, when my
intentions were ruthlessly frustrated by my companions, who
would stop at nothing short of its summit, where I eventually
found myself. The view was exceedingly lovely and ex tensive.
Beneath, and between us and the sea, lay the
town in the blazing sun. In among its solid stone buildings
patches of native mud-built huts huddled together
as though they had been shaken down out of a sack into the
town to serve as dunnage. Then came the snow-white
surf wall, and across it the blue sea with our steamer rolling
to and fro on thé long, regular swell, impatiently waiting until
Sunday should be over and she could work cargo. Round
us on all the other sides were wooded hills and valleys, and
away in the distance to the west showed the white town and
castle of Elmina and the nine-mile road thither, skirting
the surf-bound seashore, only broken on its level way by
the mouth of the Sweet River. ' Over all was the brooding
silence of the noonday heat, broken only by the dulled
thunder of the surf.
After seeing these things we started down stairs, and on
reaching ground descended yet lower into a sort of stonewalled
dry moat, out of which opened clean, cool, cellar-like
chambers tunnelled into the earth. These, I was informed,