The chief Bimfu, who
met me at Tumento, had broken his promise to guide me, and had neglected
to clear the way. On a largish creek which was nearly dry I saw a number
of 'women's washings.' Then we passed on the right a hillock seventy to
eighty feet high, where quartz showed in detached and weathered blocks.
Beyond it were native shafts striking the auriferous drift at a depth of
eight to ten feet. A few yards further on the usual washings showed that
the top soil is also worth working.
Another half-hour brought us to about a dozen native shafts in the usual
chimney shape. They were quite new and had been temporarily left on
account of the rise of the water, which was here twenty-four feet below
the surface. The top soil is of sandy clay, and the gold-containing
drifts, varying in thickness, they told me, from two to four feet,
consisted of quartz pebbles bedded in red loam. The general look of the
stratum and the country suggested an old lagoon.
An hour and a half of hammock brought me from the landing-place of the
Fura Creek to the village of Insimankao. Rain was falling heavily and
prevented all attempts at observation. The settlement is the usual group
of swish and bamboo box-huts nestling in the bush.
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