had also been constructed to keep slaves in when they were
the staple export of the Gold Coast. They were so ref
ingly cool that I lingered looking at them and the* masswe
doors, ere being marched up to ground level again, and d I
the hill through some singularly awful stenches, mos y a“ ®in
from rubber, into the big Wesleyan church m the mld
the town. It is a building in the terrible^frico-Goth
style, but it compares most favourably with the
Sierra Leone, particularly internally, wherein, indee , _
surpasses that structure. And then we returne
Mission House and spent a very pleasant evening, save tor
the knowledge (which amounted in me to remorse) that, had
R not b l n for my edification, not one of my friends would
have spent the day toiling about the town they j | j | g
too well. Mr. Dennis Kemp was chairman and supennten
dent of the Wesleyan Mission on the Gold Coast when
f a s t t h e r e , and he had filled this important positiorifo,- some
time This is the largest and most influential Protestant
mission on the West Coast of Africa, and it is now, I am
glad to say, adding a technical department to its scholastic
and religious one. The Basel Mission has done a great deal
of good work in giving technical instruction _to t e na H
and practically started this most important
education. There is still an almost infinite amount of this
work to be done, the African being so strangely^deficien
in mechanical culture; infinitely more so, indeed, in t
than in any other particular. All the other ro es a
missions are following the Basel Mission’s ^ and,^recognising
that a good deal of their failure arises from a want of
this practical side in their instruction are now ^
nical schools : - th e Church of England in Sierra Leone, the
Wesleyans on the Gold Coast, a n d . the Presbyterians in
' C f n bsaome of these technical schools the sort of instruction
given is, to my way of thinking; ill-advised ; arts of no
fmmediate or ¿ a t * * in
West Africa— s u c h as printing, book-binding,
2 S t a u g h t . But this is not the case under the Wesleyans. who
S S ! south's work, carpentering, bricklayrng. waggon-
II MISSIONS
building, See. A la s ! none of the missions save the Roman
Catholic teach the thing that it is most important the natives
should learn, in the face of the conditions that European
government of the Coast has induced, namely, improved
methods of agriculture, and plantation work.
The Wesleyan Mission has only four white ministers here.
Native ministers there are seventeen, and the rest of the
staff is entirely native, consisting of 70 Catechists, 144 day
school teachers, 386 Sunday-school teachers, and 405 local
preachers. The total number of fully accredited members of
this sect in 1893 was stated in the Gold Coast Annual to be
7,066.
The total amount of money raised by this mission on the
Gold Coast in 1893 was ^ 5,33^ I4-y- 9^- This is a very
remarkable sum and most creditable to the native members
of the sect, for almost all the other native Christian bodies
are content to be in a state of pauperised dependency on
British subscriptions. The headquarters of the Wesleyan
Mission were, up to last year, at Cape Coast, but now they
have been removed to Aburi on the hills some twenty-six
miles behind Accra, and Cape Coast is no longer the headquarters
of any governmental or religious affair. The
Government removed to Accra from Cape Coast several
years ago, on account of the great unhealthiness of the
latter place and in the hope that Accra would prove less
fatal. Unfortunately this hope has not been realised ;
moreover the landing at Accra is worse than at Cape Coast,,
and the supply of fresh water very poor.
Accra is one of the five West Coast towns that look well
from the sea. The others don’t look well from anywhere. First
in order of beauty comes San. Paul de Loanda; then Cape
Coast with its satellite Elmina, then Gaboon, then Accra with
its satellite Christiansborg, and lastly, Sierra Leone.
What there is of beauty in Accra is oriental in type. Seep
from the sea, Fort St. James on the left and Christiansborg
Castle on the right, both almost on shore level, give, with an
outcrop of sandy dwarf cliffs, a certain air of balance and
strength to the town, though but for these and the two old
castles, Accra would be but a poor place and a flimsy, for the