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The New York Times, October 17, 1886, p.5:

ACCRA ON THE GOLD COAST

ARRIVAL THERE AND THE FIRST THINGS SEEN.

VIEWED FROM THE SEA--A LANDING AGAINST DIFFICULTIES--
SAVAGES OF THE COAST--THE RAIN BELT.

    ACCRA, West Africa, July 20.--Had we the thousand-mile range of vision possessed by the Russian wag who, when crossing the great plain that borders the Black Sea, bade a passing wagoner get out of his way and let him see what was going on in Moscow, we might look northward across the whole breadth of Ashanti and see the burned Coomassie of 1874 reviving that objectionable phenix which, with a perseverance worthy of a better cause, has been rising from the ashes in every form of prose and verse for the last 23 centuries. But, as Sam Weller would have said, "my vision is limited."

    All that I see of the Gold Coast at this moment strikes me as being strongly suggestive of an interminable dish of parsley edged with an equally boundless smear of mustard, while the creeks and rivers which at long intervals relieve the benumbing sameness of the shore seem to indicate that "Afric's sunny fountains" have got tired of "rolling down their golden sand," and have taken to rolling down some extremely dirty water instead.

    In what way this charming region assists the "progressive development" of the human race may be seen through a single glance at the black, bare-limbed, howling, misshapen goblins that crowd our fore deck whose alleged relationship to himself any respectable gorilla would repudiate with aristocratic indignation, even if Dr. Darwin himself were to affirm it on oath. There are the famous "Krooboys" of the Guinea coast, unmatched as boatmen and freight handlers, but by no means to be certificated in any other capacity, except, perhaps, in that of models for an artist wishing to paint the demons in "Faust."

    Although the evil reputation of the reknowned "west coast" is a favorite theme for jest there is little food for mirth in its actual presence. No words can describe the slow, freezing horror which it lets fall drop by drop into any one whose ill fortune dooms them to a long-continued imprisonment in the grim and lifeless gloom of its weird panorama. In the clearest and sunniest weather the great equatorial forest, shutting out with its black mass of intertwined leaves and branches every glimpse of the bright tropical sky, seems to confront every stranger with the same sullen, unchanging scowl. The black trees overhead, the dark mud banks below, the foul, beer-colored waters from which the horny snout and narrow, cruel eye of a crocodile start up ever and anon, the slimy pools with their long, rank grass, the coiling creepers, twining snakelike round every bole and bough, the huge dank fungi flattening upon the oozy rottenness below, the lonely shore outstretched in the never-ending curves of bare and lifeless sand, the restless sea that breaks upon it forever with a dreary, eternal moan, and the sombre leaves with their ghostly rustle, as if whispering to each other some secret too frightful for mortal ear, all have a gloomy and terrible harmony. Nature is here in her sternest mood, unchanged and unsoftened after so many thousand years, defying alike restless barbarism and calculating civilization with the dead weight of all that tremendous passivity against which all the energies of man are as nothing.

    If such be the aspect of West Africa in fine weather it may easily imagined how formidably its natural dreariness is deepened by this season of mist and rain. Since passing Sierra Leone we have had more than a sufficiency of both, as is the case with every one who ventures across the border of the "rain belt," as sailors significantly call that section of the torrid zone comprising the Guinea coast and the sea immediately adjacent to it, over the whole breadth of which rain falls with more or less violence during seven or eight months out of the twelve. Once involved in this maze of intermittent storms one fares as badly as I did among the Cordilleras of Brazil, where (as my little Irish landlord bitterly remarked,) "ye get ivery sort of weather from Oirland to the north pole, sure, within the space of half an hour." Nothing is more exasperating than the sudden bursting of one of these African squalls, which seem to time their coming so as to inflict as much annoyance as possible.

    With our usual good luck we pass during the night the only bit of scenery worth looking at in this part of the coast, viz., the high land near Cape Coast Castle, a seasonable although momentary relief to the dreary and monotonous hideousness of the low, bristly, interminable jungle which may be best imagined by picturing one's self a second-hand hair brush several hundred miles long. But next morning some slight compensation awaits us in the bold, rocky bluff of Winnebah, which thrusts forth its broad, black breast into the roaring sea as if defying the white-lipped wrath of the breakers that come thundering against it, flinging their great hills of foam mast high into the air, while amid the crags four small white houses peer down into the howling chaos below like watching children, half pleased and half frightened.
    An hour later, two or three long, sloping hills begin to loom through the breaking mist, and suddenly as if at the rising of a curtain, the trim white houses of Accra, and the ridge of dark red sandstone upon which they stand, and the tall feathery palms that rise above them against the sky line, and the curving yellow beach below with its ring of glittering foam, and the wide green uplands beyond, terminated by the rocky headland crowned with the low massive white walls of Christianborg Castle, all start into view at once.

    The innocent young men who come out here for the first time with ideas of European comfort and civilization, thinking they have nothing to do but "go ashore at once," are naturally somewhat startled to find that the first question is whether they can go ashore at all. Old stagers talk so cooly of a "heavy beach" that it is rather a shock to learn that this simple phrase implies the breaking upon the beach of so violent a surf as to involve the certainty of being capsized and the very strong probability of being drowned. In the offing lies a steamer which has already waited here two days with passengers whom she cannot land even in a native "surfboat," the only craft which has any chance of living in such a sea. However, the breakers are a little less formidable now, and a native boatman's verdict of "naaf" (middling,) suffices to encourage us to venture.
    The Acting Governor of Lagos, the Hon. Frederick Evans, for whom a special surfboat has been sent out by the Treasurer, kindly offers me a seat in it. So we jump, or rather tumble, into the dancing boat--which bumps against our knees one minute and is yards away beneath our feet the next--and away we go to find out whether we are to be drowned or not.

    Up and down, up and down, with the spray lashing our faces and the water gurgling round our feet, now rising far into the air on a hilltop or seething foam, now plunging with a dizzy swing into the depths of a shadowy green valley between two towering walls of dark water. Every moment it seems as if we must certainly be overwhelmed by some huge "roller," which comes rushing on, curling its vast, snowy crest far above our heads like a falling avalanche. But the monster always misses us by a hair's breadth, for the gaunt, black scarecrows who sit perched along our rocking gunwale, each with one foot in a sort of stirrup of rope fixed in the boat's side, have no match along the whole Guinea coast for such work as this.
    Every stroke of the short, strong paddles--which, instead of being spear-pointed like those of the Grain Coast or spoon-shaped like those of Niger, resemble a clumsy three-pronged fork, with very broad and thick points--is accompanied by a sharp yell, such as Mr. Lowell humorously called "a dogsology," and sometimes even by a few words of untranslatable abuse hurled with angry gestures at the furious waves. Meanwhile scores of eager eyes watch our progress both from the ship and from the shore; but, except when suddenly flung up on the crest of a huge billow, both we and our boat are completely invisible from either point.

    And now the yelling grows louder and wilder as the strokes of the paddle suddenly quicken, and the boat rocks to and fro till it appears as if one inch more must turn her right over, while, as we swoop upward on the whirl of a mighty wave, the shore and the great billows that thunder upon it, hitherto dim and distant, start all at once into perilous nearness.
    We are now running parallel with the line of gnashing breakers along the beach, our only chance being to skirt its terrible outer edge till we can seize a favorable moment for our final rush. As the next wave lifts us upon its crest we see a swarm of black figures hurrying down to the shore, ready to drag us to land when our boat capsizes. Then comes an ear-piercing howl from our crew--the boat is whirled onward like a stone from a sling--there comes a tremendous shock--a deafening crash--an indistinct vision of black faces and outstretched arms amid a swirl of boiling foam--and then I fell myself clutched by a dozen hands at once and borne landward in a kind of complicated "free fight" among six or seven brawny natives.

    "Just as well we didn't bring Mrs. Ker ashore with us," says Mr. Evans, as we mount the steep winding path leading up the ridge to the town. This is an awkward landing place at best, and I can assure you that it's very comical when a new Governor arrives, with flags flying and cannon firing, and an escort of soldiers waiting for him, to see the great man suddenly snatched up like a baby and bundled ashore by these black fellows, 'with his legs hanging dangling down, O,' as the song says. See, yonder's a fashionable native hat; how do you like it?"

    Following my companion's outstretched finger I espy something which at first glance looks like a yellow-headed African whose hair has grown down to his waist. But the next moment I see that the supposed Esau is wearing an enormous hat of dried grass, the long straggling ends of which completely hide his upper figure and make him appear as if carrying a huge truss of straw.

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    Ghana is a multiethnic country rich in natural resources and is one of the most stable and democratic countries in West Africa.

    Ghana has been inhabited for at least several thousand years, however, little is known about its early inhabitants. By the 12th century, the gold trade started to boom in Bono (Bonoman) state in what is today southern Ghana, and it became the genesis of Akan power and wealth in the region.

    Beginning in the 15th century, the Portuguese, followed by other European powers, arrived and contested for trading rights. Numerous kingdoms and empires emerged in the area, among the most powerful were the Kingdom of Dagbon in the north and the Asante (Ashanti) Empire in the south. By the mid-18th century, Asante was a highly organized state with immense wealth; it provided enslaved people for the Atlantic slave trade, and in return received firearms that facilitated its territorial expansion.

    The Asante resisted increasing British influence in the coastal areas, engaging in a series of wars during the 19th century before ultimately falling under British control. Formed from the merger of the British colony of the Gold Coast and the Togoland trust territory, Ghana in 1957 became the first Sub-Saharan country in colonial Africa to gain its independence, with Kwame NKRUMAH as its first leader.

    Ghana endured a series of coups before Lt. Jerry RAWLINGS took power in 1981 and banned political parties. After approving a new constitution and restoring multiparty politics in 1992, RAWLINGS won presidential elections in 1992 and 1996 but was constitutionally prevented from running for a third term in 2000.

    John KUFUOR of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) succeeded him and was reelected in 2004. John Atta MILLS of the National Democratic Congress won the 2008 presidential election and took over as head of state. MILLS died in July 2012 and was constitutionally succeeded by his vice president, John Dramani MAHAMA, who subsequently won the December 2012 presidential election.

    In 2016, Nana Addo Dankwa AKUFO-ADDO of the NPP defeated MAHAMA, marking the third time that Ghana’s presidency had changed parties since the return to democracy. AKUFO-ADDO was reelected in 2020.

    In recent years, Ghana has taken an active role in promoting regional stability and is highly integrated in international affairs.

    CIA World Factbook: Ghana


Area of Ghana: 239,460 sq km
slightly smaller than Oregon

Population of Ghana: 33,846,114 (2023) | 23,382,848 (2008)

Languages of Ghana:
English official
Akan, Moshi-Dagomba, Ewe, Ga,
& other African languages

Ghana Capital: Accra


ACCRA WEATHER

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    He has scarcely passed when up come four or five stalwart blacks in dark blue uniforms and scarlet facings, who carry their rifles in a smart, soldierlike fashion suggestive of long discipline. These are the famous Houssas, the Sikhs of West Africa, who form a kind of armed constabulary along the whole Guinea coast. Though almost unknown to the civilized world they have done many a deed of valor as heroic as any which has been famed in story and song. Only the other day one of their English officers was telling me, with a glow of honest admiration on his handsome face, how 30 of his negro warriors made good their ground against ten times their number of savage Awoonas till their ammunition was spent, and then charged home with the bayonet, sweeping away their swarming enemies like chaff.

    The Governor has kindly sent down a horse and gig for us, which, guarded by a trim black groom in a spotless white jacket, are standing in front of a long, low, many-windowed building, displaying in rusty black paint upon a rough plank the magic words "Post Office." In another moment we are rattling along the wide, red, well beaten road on our two-mile drive to the Governor's residence at Christianborg Castle, passing some noteworthy object at every turn.
    The broad whitewashed front and pillared doorway of the Wesleyan Chapel, the low, massive, loopholed wall of the old Dutch fort, (now used as a prison,) and the seven long iron guns that look seaward from the brow of the cliff beside it serve only to heighten by contrast the picturesqueness of the primitive barbarism around them. Small hovels of mud with a top-heavy thatch of dried grass, such as one sees in every Arab village of the Eastern Soudan; tall, slender palm trees overshadowing tumbledown plank stores, which look very much like overgrown packing cases with one side knocked out, and contain little beyond bad gin and worse rum; gaunt, long-limbed native gentlemen in striped blankets and leopard-skin sashes; fuzzy-haired colored ladies tastefully attired in two brass armlets and a red cotton handkerchief, and romping children with nothing on but a grin.
    Here and there among the motley crowd, conspicuous by his proud and defiant bearing, appears a tall, bony Ashantee, whose prominent and somewhat Jewish features are set in a frame of short, black, wiry beard.

    At last we are clear of the town and spinning briskly over the green sloping uplands beyond. To our right lies the boundless sea, to our left a wide undulating plateau dappled with clumps of rich equatorial vegetation, and slanting gradually upward to the beautiful hills which--unhappily almost hidden by a sea of golden haze--stand up against the northern sky 28 miles away. The highway, broad, smooth, and set with trees at short intervals along either side, might pass for a post road in Western France were not the trees so unmistakably tropical.
    But we do not go far without another and gloomier proff that we are really in Africa--an enormous anthill of thick red clay, more than six feet in height, and literally creeping from top to bottom with active and ferocious life. Not without a shudder do I remember how recently, both here and in South America, it was a common thing to see in passing one of these fearful mounds a bare white skull staring blankly out of it in mute witness how some living man had been thrust in to be devoured piecemeal by the army of vampires within.

    "Yonder's Fetich Rock, which people here think so sacred," observes my companion, pointing to a bold rocky bluff that juts out into the sea midway along the beach. "When a lot of stones were taken from there a while ago the natives got so excited about it that we almost had a riot. See, there's the Mission House"--pointing to a trim one-storied building that peeps at us over its high boundary wall, through the narrow gateway of which we catch a passing glimpse of a perfect nest of date and fan palms, almond trees, flamboyants, &c., that would make a botanist's mouth water.
    "Do you see that big house with the palisade round it down there in the hollow? It belongs to a great native chief and he's called it 'Philadelphia.' Something for your American readers, that. These two lines of neat little huts making a sort of street to the right are the quarters of the married Houssas, all built with their own hands. Now, look at that big whitish gray building some way ahead of us; that's Christianborg Castle itself, where the Governor lives."

    There, sure enough, is the famous stronghold, built in days when the white cross of Denmark floated here, long before the coming of the British union jack. But the details of all that we saw and heard there must be reserved for my next letter.
DAVID KER.

The New York Times, October 24, 1886, p.6:

AN OLD CASTLE IN AFRICA

CHRISTIANBORG FORTRESS AND ITS FURNISHINGS.

A CHEERY GOVERNOR WITH A STAFF OF FEVER-STRICKEN OFFICIALS--DAHOMEY LOSING ITS PRESTIGE.

    AT THE MOUTH OF THE NIGER, July 27.--I left off last week with our arrival at Accra and our drive to Christianborg Castle to visit the local Governor, which was certainly the most picturesque trip that we have made since our African voyage began. Sadly disfigured though its walls have been, both by nature and by man, the old Danish fortress of the Gold Coast (now transformed into a British "Government House") still makes a gallant show. Perched on a steep, rocky headland forming the highest point of the Accra ridge, and overhanging the sea on one side, while commanding on the other a small lagoon connected with it at high tide, the castle has a position which must have been of priceless importance in the old fighting days, when a white settler on the West African coast had his hand against every man and every man's hand against him.

    But unhappily it needs no special acuteness to discern that this site was not chosen for military purposes alone. In the days when this fortress was built European officials in tropical lands were allowed to eke out their scanty salaries by private trading, and in a region like West Africa such trading could only deal in one article of merchandise, viz., slaves. This tiny bay sheltered behind the Christianborg headland must have been only too convenient a lurking place for some light brigantine to lie at anchor and take in her cargo of human bodies and souls, watching meanwhile for a night dark enough to enable her to slip out into the open sea despite the sleepless vigilance of the British cruises outside.
    None but God can tell what horrors were once witnessed by the gloomy vaults far down beneath the castle, in which scores of fettered slaves, packed together until they could hardly more a limb, sweltered through the long agony of a stifling African night, till, when morning came, the jailers found many of their still living victims chained to stiffened and already decaying corpses.

    But now the fresh sea breeze rushes unchecked through grated loopholes that were once blocked with a struggling mass of distorted faces and gasping lips, and the Governor's native groom, as he pilots me through the maze of these dreary catacombs, taps with his knuckles the topmost of a pile of kegs in one corner and says with a knowing grin: "Black man no live here any more; rum live here instead."

    Although greatly changed as regards its interior, Christianborg still retains almost unaltered the massive outer wall of grayish-white masonry, loopholed for musketry and cannon, which frowned defiance at the marauding spearmen of Ashantee 90 years ago. Several blue-coated Houssas present arms to us as we pass through its low tunnel-like archway into a small courtyard shaded with trees, from which a steep, broad stair of crumbling stone leads up to the main building.
    At the top of this ascent Mr. Evans halts for a moment to point out to me the old chapel of the fortress (now turned into a billiard room) and to draw my attention to an inscription upon its wall which may fairly be called the castle's certificate of baptism:

CHRISTIAN VII., 1794.

    It is a pleasant surprise to find within these grim old ramparts a suite of handsome rooms furnished in the most approved modern style, with sofas, armchairs, books, flowers, photographic albums, and ornamental screens worthy of a Parisian drawing room. Through the countless windows of the spacious veranda that runs along the front of the building--a delightful place to sit and read on a hot Summer afternoon--the cool breeze comes freshly in from the sea, upon which our steamer may be seen lying like a toy two miles away.
    A few yards beneath the veranda a broad platform of stone commands the landward approach to the castle with the three small brass cannon leveled over its low white parapet, and through the universal silence rises in deep sonorous cadence the boom of the unresting waves against the sandstone cliff far below.

    In the drawing room we are received by the Governor himself, a stout, pleasant-faced, cheery old gentleman, with a thick gray beard. His ruddy complexion and clear bright eye almost contradict the terrific reports which we have been hearing for days past from our fellow-passengers, all whose allusions to their local acquaintances sound like the returns of killed and wounded after a battle. But the first five minutes' talk with his Excellency gives a a formidable confirmation of these gloomy stories.
    One official is down with fever, another with dysentery, a third with rheumatism. This man is just going off sick leave, that one has lately come back from it almost as sick as he went. A Colonial Secretary has recently died of pneumonia, a District Judge is completely disabled by liver complaint. In short, the entire local administration just at present seems to consist entirely of the Governor himself, who appears to hold as many offices and to discharge as various duties as Pooh-Bah in The Mikado.

    Even during the brief space occupied by our visit I see brought to him by various messengers no fewer than 11 dispatches of different kinds. Among these are two or three telegrams, for the telegraph line which is being carried westward along the Guinea coast from Lagos has just reached Accra this very morning, while another line is creeping eastward from Sierra Leone to meet it and make the chain of communication complete.

    Having completed our inspection of the castle and the garden in front of it--where the Governor is doing his best to raise plantains, Indian corn, beans, tomatoes, and the other vegetables which are so precious in this unhealthy region, where one man's meat is literally another man's poison--we start on our return journey to the town, halting every here and there to examine some new feature of the place.
    New Site--so called as being more modern than either the town of Accra itself or the grim old fortress that guards it--is the aristocratic quarter of the little capital, and consists of a group of well-built country houses tenanted by the principal local officials, and shielded from the burning African sun by a thick wall of tropical vegetation. All are very much of the same pattern, and with the same characteristics. A wide courtyard shaded with spreading trees--a stair outside the house leading up to the higher story--a broad, airy veranda, with a roof and Venetian blinds, running quite round the building and containing easy chairs, writing tables, cane lounges, and very often beds likewise.
    The rooms are immensely large, and their walls seem to be all doors and windows altogether, for in this scorching region, the atmosphere of which alternates between that of a vapor bath and that of an oven, the slightest breath of fresh air is caught at with an eagerness which the inhabitants of the cooler north can but faintly imagine.

    With all these precautions, aided by the rocky soil and elevated position of Accra, it seems almost inconceivable that the capital of the Gold Coast should really be one of the most unhealthy spots in Western Africa. But that such is actually the case there can be no doubt whatsoever. A single glance around the circle of English officials would suffice to convince the most skeptical. Several of them are men of fine stature and powerful frame, whom any recruiting Sergeant of the Life Guards would eye with grim professional approval. Others are smooth-faced young fellows who have left the cool woodlands and breezy moors of England but a few months ago. But one and all are marked with the worn and faded look, the heavy eye, the flabby, discolored skin, the nerveless languor, which every one who has lived long on the Guinea Coast knows only too well.

    No one can be surprised at this, however, who is familiar with the details of everyday life in this dismal region. You rise feverish and unrefreshed after a night made miserable by mosquitoes and "prickly heat." You swallow your early cup of tea and its adjuncts with what appetite you may, and go out for a mouthful of fresh air before the daily grind begins. Then, for several hours together, you struggle through your dry and tedious work, against an ever-growing weight of lassitude, with the heat dripping from your forehead, and your wet hand staining the paper that it touches.
    Your 11 o'clock bath and breakfast revive you just enough to bear without absolutely collapsing the strain of another long spell of work in the afternoon, from which you go out spent, jaded, and irritable for your evening ride. Then home to dinner at 7, to wrestle with a joint of meat which the science of your native cook has made as hard as the Atlantic cable or burned as black as if it had just been shot up from the crater of Vesuvius. Or perhaps you dine out, to meet the same three or four men whom you are in the habit of meeting every day, and to hear the same talk and the same stories which you have heard every evening for the last six months.
    Can anybody wonder that so many of these poor fellows should commit the fatal error of supplementing with strong stimulants the food which does not nourish and the exercise which does not strengthen, or that the few who escape an untimely grave in the African jungle are sent home as helpless invalids, to live through years of misery because they have not the strength to die?

    It is quite a relief to turn away from all these sights of horror to the open sea once more...
DAVID KER.

The remainder of the article above can be found at Togo News

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