' But progress is slow upon the Gold Coast, and our wishes may
still be realised.
I cannot better conclude this chapter than with an extract from Captain
Brackenbury's 'Narrative of the Ashanti War.' [Footnote: Blackwoods,
Edinburgh and London, 1874. Vol. ii. pp. 351, 352.] It will show how well
that experienced and intelligent officer foresaw in 1873 the future of the
Gold Coast.
'Are there no means of opening this country up to trade, no means of
infusing into it an element superior to that of the Fanti races, of
holding in check the savagery of the inland tribes, and preventing the
whole coast again becoming abandoned to fetishism and human sacrifices? To
the writer's mind there is but one method, and that one by an appeal to
man's most ignoble passion--the lust of gold. This country is not without
reason called the Gold Coast. Gold is there in profusion, and to be had
for the seeking. We have ourselves seen the women washing the sand at Cape
Coast and finding gold. When Captain Thompson visited the Wassaw (Wasa)
country, he found the roads impassable at night by reason of the gold-pits
upon them. Captain Butler describes western Akim as a country teeming with
gold.
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