Grant, who reported it as exceptionally
promising.
About sunset we hit the Ebumesu, or 'Winding Water.' The people declare
that it had a single mouth till the earthquakes of July 1862, which shook
down Accra, raised a divide, and made a double _embouchure_. The eastern
fork, known as the Pana, is the drain of a large and branchy lagoon,
brackish water, bitumen-coloured or brassy-yellow, with poisonous
vegetation, and bounded by mangroves abounding in tannin. These
water-forests grow differently from the red and white rhizophores of
Eastern Africa. We shall again be ferried over the upper part of the
western mouth. Both have bad bars, especially the latter. I therefore can
by no means agree with Mr. Walker's report:--'The western outlet of the
Ebumesu, near the village of Eku Enu, or Ekwanu, is quite practicable for
ordinary surf-boats during the dry season--say half the year--and even in
the middle of June I found the bar smooth and safe. Having for thirty
years worked some of the worst bars and beaches' (the Gaboon? or the
Sherbro?) 'along some hundreds of miles of the West Coast, I am able to
state that the Ebumesu bar might be safely utilised for landing goods and
machinery; but during the heavy surf of the rainy season goods could
always be disembarked at Axim, and, if necessary, carried along the beach
to the mouth of the Ebumesu, and thence by boat to the tramway from that
river to the mine.
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