Entries tagged with: gold exploration
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Exploration of the Golden Land
PRELIMINARY: TRIESTE TO LISBON. The glory of an explorer, I need hardly say, results not so much from the extent, or the marvels of his explorations, as from the consequences to which they lead. Judged by this test, my little list of discoveries has not been unfavoured of fortune. Where two purblind fever-stricken men plodded painfully through fetid swamp and fiery thorn-bush over the Zanzibar-Tanganyika track, mission-houses and schools may now be numbered by the dozen. Missionaries bring consuls, and consuls bring commerce and colonisation. On the Gold Coast of Western Africa, whence came the good old ’guinea,’ not a washing-cradle, not a pound of quicksilver was to be found in 1862; in 1882 five mining companies are at work; and in 1892 there will be as many score. I had long and curiously watched from afar the movement of the Golden Land, our long-neglected El Dorado, before the opportunity...
Posted on May 30, 2007 12:35 PM
Gold is the Magic Word
For long years my words fell upon flat ears. Presently the Ashanti war of 1873-74 brought the subject before the public. The Protectorate was overrun by British officers, and their reports and itineraries never failed to contain, with a marvellous unanimity of iteration, the magic word–Gold. The fraction of country, twenty-six miles of seaboard out of two hundred, by a depth of sixty–in fact, the valley of the Ancobra River–now (early 1882) contains five working companies. Upwards of seventy concessions, to my knowledge, have been obtained from native owners, and many more are spoken of. In fact, development has at length begun, and the line of progress is clearly traced. At Madeira I was joined (January 8, 1882) by Captain Cameron, R.N., C.B., &c. Our object was to explore the so-called Kong Mountains, which of late years have become quasi-mythical. He came out admirably equipped; nor was I less prepared....
Posted on May 30, 2007 12:31 PM
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