The body is occupied by the palaver-hall of the _opper
koopman_ (chief factor), now converted into a court-house and a small
armoury of sniders. It leads to the bedrooms, disposed on three sides. The
materials are trap, quartz, probably gold-bearing, and fine bricks,
evidently home-made. The substantial quarters fronting the sea are breezy,
comfortable, and healthy; and the large cistern contains the only good
drinking-water in Axim. Life must be somewhat dull here, but, after all,
not so bad as in many an out-station of British India. The chief grievance
is that the inmates, the District-commissioner and his medico, are mere
birds of passage; they are ordered off and exchanged, at the will of
head-quarters, often before they can settle down, and always before they
learn to take interest in the place. The works consist of two bastions on
the land side; a large one to the south-east, and a smaller to the
north-east. Seawards projects a rounded cavalier, fronted by dead ground,
or rather water. In the days of the Dutch the platforms carried '22 iron
guns, besides some patteraroes.' Now there are two old bronze guns, two
'chambeis' bearing the mark 'La Hague,' and an ancient iron tube
dismounted: a seven-pounder mountain-gun, of a type now obsolete, lurks in
the shadows of the arched gateway.
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