TO INSIMANKÁO AND THE BUTABUÉ RAPIDS.
Leaving Axim on March 16, I slept at Kumprasi and remarked a great change
in the bar of the Ancobra River. During the dry season it had been
remarkably good, but now it began to change for the worse; and soon it
will become impassable for three or four days at a time. My surf-boat,
when coming across it, shipped three seas. On my return down the river
(April 15) the whole sand-bank to the west of the mouth had been washed
away, forming dangerous shoals; the sea was furiously breaking and
'burning,' as the old Dutch say, and the waves which entered the river
were so high that canoes were broken and boats were seriously damaged.
I stored my goods in the surf-boat, and set out in our big canoe early
next morning. A string of dug-outs was next passed, loaded with
palm-kernels, maize, and bananas; it appeared as if they were all bound
for the market at Axim. I took specimens of swish and stone from 'Ross's
Hill.' The top soil showed good signs of gold, and the grains were
tolerably coarse. Here a floating power-engine would soon bare the reefs
and warp up the swamp. Messieurs Allan and Plisson, who were floating down
in a surf-boat, gave me the news that the steam-launch _Effuenta_ had at
last succumbed in the struggle for life.
I landed at Akromási, a village where the true bamboo-cane grows, and
found the soil to be a grey sandy clay; there were many 'women's washings'
near the settlement. Shortly before reaching the Ahenia River we saw the
landing-place for the valuable 'Apatim concession.' They told me on
enquiry that the stream is deep and has been followed up in a surf-boat
for a mile or two. It may therefore prove of use to Mr. Irvine's property,
Apatim.
At half-past five that evening I reached Akankon, and slept well at
'Riverside House.' Mr. Morris had begun levelling the ground and building
new quarters for general use. I gave him some slips of bamboo and roots of
Bahama-grass, as that planted had grown so well.
Next morning we got under way early (6.50) and proceeded up the river. The
canoe-men, seeing pots of palm-wine on the banks, insisted upon landing to
slake their eternal thirst. The mode in which the liquor is sold shows a
trustfulness on the part of the seller which may result from firm belief
in his 'fetish.' Any passer-by can drink wine _à discrétion_, and is
expected to put the price in a calabash standing hard by. Beyond the
Yengéni River I saw for the first and only time purple clay-slate
overlying quartz. Collecting here and there specimens of geology, and
suffering much from the sun, for I still was slightly feverish, I reached
the 'great central depôt' at 4 P.M.
Tumento was found by observation to lie in N. lat. 4º 12' 20" and in W.
long. (Gr.) 2º 12' 25". Consequently it is only eighteen direct
geographical miles from the sea, the mouth of the Ancobra being in W. lat.
2º 54'. Some make the distance thirty and others sixty miles. The latter
figure would apply only by doubling the windings of the bed.
This ascent of the river convinced me more than ever that Enfrámadié is
the proper terminus of its navigation. I passed the next day at Tumento,
which proved to be only half the distance usually supposed along the
Ancobra bed from its mouth. The time was spent mainly in resting and
doctoring myself. At night the rats, holding high carnival, kept me awake
till 3 A.M.; and I heard shots being continually fired from a native mine
whose position was unknown. The natives now know how to bore and blast;
consequently thefts of powder, drills, and fuses become every day more
common. My first visit (March 20) was to the Insimankáo concession. I left
the surf-boat behind, and put my luggage into small canoes hired at
Tumento, myself proceeding in the large canoe. We shoved off from the
beach at 8.50 A.M. The Ancobra had now, after the late rains, a fair
current instead of being almost dead water; otherwise it maintained the
same appearance. The banks are conglomerate, grey clay and slate; gravel,
sand, shingle, and pebbles of reddish quartz, bedded in earth of the same
colour, succeeding one another in ever-varying succession. Only two reefs,
neither of them important, projected from the sides.
After an hour and a half paddling we reached the Fura, which I should call
a creek; it is not out of the mangrove-region. The bed is set in high,
steep banks submerged during the rains; and the narrowness of the mouth,
compared with the upper part, made it run, after the late showers, into
the Ancobra like a mill-race. In fact, the paddlers were compelled to
track in order to make headway. After ten minutes (=200 yards) we reached
a landing-place, all jungle with rotting vegetation below. I do not think
that as a waterway the Fura Creek can be made of any practical use; but it
will be very valuable for 'hydraulicking.' Canoes and small surf-boats may
run down it at certain seasons, but the flow is too fast and the bed is
too full of snags and sawyers to be easily ascended.
At the landing-place I mounted my hammock and struck the path which runs
over level ground pretty thick with second-growth. The chief Bimfú, who
met me at Tumento, had broken his promise to guide me, and had neglected
to clear the way. On a largish creek which was nearly dry I saw a number
of 'women's washings.' Then we passed on the right a hillock seventy to
eighty feet high, where quartz showed in detached and weathered blocks.
Beyond it were native shafts striking the auriferous drift at a depth of
eight to ten feet. A few yards further on the usual washings showed that
the top soil is also worth working.
Another half-hour brought us to about a dozen native shafts in the usual
chimney shape. They were quite new and had been temporarily left on
account of the rise of the water, which was here twenty-four feet below
the surface. The top soil is of sandy clay, and the gold-containing
drifts, varying in thickness, they told me, from two to four feet,
consisted of quartz pebbles bedded in red loam. The general look of the
stratum and the country suggested an old lagoon.
An hour and a half of hammock brought me from the landing-place of the
Fura Creek to the village of Insimankáo. Rain was falling heavily and
prevented all attempts at observation. The settlement is the usual group
of swish and bamboo box-huts nestling in the bush. A small clean
bird-cage, divided into two compartments, with standing bedstead, was
assigned to me. Next morning I walked to the Insimankáo mine by a path
leading along, and in places touching, the bank of the Fura Creek, which
runs through the whole property. After thirty-three minutes we reached the
'marked tree.' Here the land begins to rise and forms the Insimankáo Hill,
whose trend is to north-north-east. Mr. Walker calls it Etia-Kaah, or
Echia-Karah, meaning 'when you hear (of its fame) you will come.' It is
the usual mound of red clay, fairly wooded, and about 150 feet high; the
creek runs about 100 yards west of the pits. The reefs seemed to be almost
vertical, with a strike to the north-north-east; and the walls showed
slate, iron-oxide, and decomposed quartz. The main reef [Footnote: Mr. O.
Pegler (A.R.S.M.) describes it as a 'very powerful reef outcropping boldly
from a hill at a short distance from the native village, the strike being
north-north-east to south-south-west, and the vein having a great
inclination. At the crest of the hill it presents a massive appearance,
and is many feet in width--in some places between twenty and thirty feet.
This diminishes towards the native pits, and there the vein diverges into
two portions, both presenting a decomposed appearance, the casing on both
foot and hanging wall having a highly talcose character.' This engineer
also washed gold specks from the loose soil. Finally, he notes that the
massive quartz-outcrop is homogeneous and crystalline, giving only traces
of gold, but that the stone improves rapidly with depth.] was from eight
to ten feet thick, and I believe that there are other and parallel
formations. But the ground is very complicated, and for proper study I
should have required borings and cross-cuts.
There were two big rough pits called shafts. I descended into the deeper
one, which was fourteen to fifteen feet below ground. The walls would
repay washing on a large scale; and the look of the top soil reminded me
of the descriptions of old California and Australia when there were rushes
of miners to the gold-fields, carrying for all machinery a pick, a pan,
and a tin 'billy.'
The Insimankáo concession contains 1,000 fathoms square; the measurements
being taken from a 'marked tree' on the north-western slope of the hill
with the long name. The position is N. lat. 5º 18' 15" and the long. W.
(Gr.) 2º 14' 03". West of the centre the Fura Creek receives a small
tributary. Mr. Walker took fair samples from the well-defined reef and the
outcropping boulders, whose strike is from north-north-east to
south-south-west. He notes that the land Egwira, which lies between Wásá
and Aowin, was long famous for its mining-industry, and that it appears in
old maps as a 'Republick rich in gold.' We heard of the Abenje mine on the
same reef, four to five miles east of Insimankáo; and he declares that it
has been abandoned because the population is too scanty.
I left this mining property convinced that working it will pay well. The
only thing to be guarded against is overlapping the French concession of
Mankuma, which lies immediately to the east.
From the mine I walked back to the village, breakfasted, and returned in
the canoes to the sluice-like mouth of the Fura Greek. I then ascended the
Ancobra, in order to inspect the Butabué rapids, said to be the end of
canoe-navigation. We passed on the right a reef and a shallow of
conglomerate, washed out of the banks and forming a race; there is another
reef with its rip at Aroásu. In the early part of the afternoon we got to
the village of Ebiásu, which means 'not dark.' Here the equinoctial
showers began to fall heavily, and I was again obliged to sleep without
observations. The village is built upon a steep bank of yellow clay, with
rich red oxides; it stands forty feet above the present level, and yet at
times it is flooded out.
Leaving Ebiásu next morning, I found the banks of sand, clay, and small
pebbles beginning to shelve. We passed over slaty rocks in the bed; and
the depth of water was often not more than three feet. Women's washings
were seen on the left bank, and the river had risen after they had been
worked. We could not approach them on account of the reefs and the
current. The opposite bank, about five minutes further up, is of soft
sandstone; and here a native tunnel of forty to fifty feet had been run in
from the river to communicate with a shaft. My men were nervous about
leopards, and I had to encourage them by firing my rifle into the hole.
The normal formation continued, and here the land is evidently built by
the river; there are few hills, and the present direction of the bed has
been determined by the rocks and reefs, the outliers of the old true
coast. These features may have been lower than they are now, and owe their
present elevation to upheaval. Immature conglomerate--that is, a pudding
of pebbles and hardened clay--seems to have been deposited in the
synclinal curve of the bed-rock, principally slate. Overlying both are the
top soil and the sands, the latter often resembling the washed out
tailings of stamped rock.
Passing the village Abanfokru, I found myself amongst the extensive
concessions of the French, who have taken the alluvial grounds for washing
and working. M. Bonnat's map gives the approximate positions and
dimensions; and the several sites are laid down by M. Dahse. I shall have
more to say about this section on my return.
Navigation now becomes more intricate and difficult, owing to rocks and
reefs, rips and rapids. A large stony holm about mid-stream is called
Eduásim, meaning 'thief in river.' I need not repeat from my map the names
of the unimportant settlements. At the mouth of the Abonsá the bed widens
to nearly double, and the north-easterly direction shifts to due north.
This great drain, falling into the left bank, lies between five and six
miles above the Fura Creek. I shall have more to say about it when
describing my descent. Two miles further north brought us to the beginning
of the rapids, which apparently end the boat-navigation. The only canoes
are used for ferrying; I saw no water-traffic, and there were no longer
any fish-weirs. Moreover, the country has been deserted, I was told, since
the arrival of strangers. The natives have probably been treated with
little consideration. A quarter of an hour's hauling, all hands being
applied to the canoe, took us about fifty yards over the Impayim rapid,
whose fall is from four to five feet deep. Immediately after the Butabué
influent on the right bank the bed bends abruptly east, and we reached the
far-famed rapids of that name. Here the whole surface, as far up as the
eye can see, is a mass of rocks and of broken, surging water. The
vegetation of the banks, bound together by creepers, llianas, and rattans,
is peculiarly fine. I landed upon one of the rocks, sketched the Butabué,
whose name none could explain, and returned down stream to the 'great
central Depôt,' Tumento.
I can say little about the River Ancobra above the rapids, except that it
resumes its course from the north-north-east and the north, apparently
guided by the hills. The sources are now only a few miles distant, but the
stream is unnavigable, and they must be reached on foot. The late M.
Bonnat walked up by a hunter's path, now killed out, to the ruins of Bush
Castle, which Jeekel calls Fort Ruyghaver. He there secured possession of
the rich Asamán mines, which the work was intended to defend. There is
some fetish there, and the place is known as the burial-ground of the
kings. I was also told that four or five marches off a _cache_ of
treasure, described to be large, had been made during the Ashanti-Gyáman
war, and had been defended by the usual superstitions. Fetish may have
lost much of its power on the coast; in the interior, however, it is still
strong, and few white men live long after being placed under its ban.