At 3.15
P.M. came Grand Lahou--Bosman's Cabo La Hoe--180 miles from Cape Palmas.
The native settlements of nut-brown huts in the clearings of thick forests
resemble heaps of withered leaves. The French have re-occupied a fort
twenty miles up the pretty barless river, the outlet of a great lagoon; it
was abandoned during the Prusso-Gallic war. Nine Bristol barques were
lying off Three Towns, a place not upon the chart, and at Half-Jack, 205
miles from the Cape. Here we anchored and rolled heavily through the
night, a regular seesaw of head and heels. Seamen have prejudices about
ships, pronouncing some steady and others 'uncommon lively.' I find them
under most circumstances 'much of a muchness.'
The next morning carried us forty miles along the Bassam country and
villages, Little, Piccaninny, and Great, to Grand Bassam. It is a regular
lagoon-land, whose pretty rivers are the outlets of the several sweet
waters and the salt-ponds. Opposite Piccaninny Bassam heads, with its
stalk to the shore and spreading out a huge funnel eastward and westward,
the curious formation known as the 'Bottomless Pit.' The chart shows a
dot, a line, and 200 fathoms. In these days of deep-sea soundings I would
recommend it to the notice of the Hydrographic Office.
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