The houses, _crepi_ or parget below and
bamboo above, are mere band-boxes raised from the ground; the smaller
perfectly imitated poultry-crates. All appeared unusually neat and clean,
with ornamental sheets of clam-shells trodden into the earth before the
thresholds. 'Fetish' was abundant, and so was that worst of all plagues
the sand-fly.
After breakfasting we set out north over a sandy level, clearly reclaimed
from the sea, and in a few minutes struck the true coast. Here begins the
St. John mining-ground, conceded for prospecting to Messieurs Gillett and
Selby. A fair path runs up hillocks of red-yellow clay, metalled with
rounded quartz and ironstone-gravel, roped with roots and barred with
trees; their greatest elevation may have been 120 feet. Two parallel
ridges, trending north-north-east, are bisected by torrents pouring
westward to the river: now dry, they have rolled down huge boulders in
their frequent floods. These 'hard-heads,' which try the hammer, show a
revetment of cellular iron upon a solid core of greenstone and bluish
trap. Some fragments not a little resembled the clay-slates of the
Brazilian gold-mines. Such was the concession which we named Sao Joao do
Principe.
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