The Takwa
settlement, a line of bamboo and swish huts well built enough, lies, like
a hamlet in Congo-land, along the winding road. It is bare of trees, but
here and there a shaft yawns before the doors. M. Dahse makes the
population before 1879 to have been 6,000 souls, and in 1881 about 3,000.
I should reduce the latter figure to 600, and propose for 1882, before the
May emigration, 1,500 to 1,600. The people are Coast-men and islanders of
every tribe, with a fair sprinkling of dissolute ruffians, 'white
blackmen,' from Sierra Leone and Akra, drunken Fanti policemen, and
plundering Haussa soldiers. The ex-manager of the Effuenta mine says, in
allusion to his early residence there, 'So wird Einem das Leben daselbst
zu einer wahren Hoelle;' and he rightly describes the peculiar industries
of these true infernal regions as 'Schnappskneipen, Spielhoellen und
Schlimmeres.' Almost every house combines the pub. and the agapemone: all
the chief luxuries of the Coast-'factories' are there, and the 'blay'
(basket) of Sierra Leone comes out strong. Brilliant cottons and kerchiefs
hang from the normal line; there is pomatum for the lucky dandy and tallow
for the miner down in his luck; whilst gold-dust is conjured from pouch or
pocket by pipes and tobacco, needles and thread, beads, knives, and other
notions.
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