This part had been chipped ready for grinding,
and the article was evidently unfinished; one side still wanted polishing,
and the part opposite the bevel showed signs of tapering, as if a point
instead of an edge had been intended. At Axim I split off by gads and
wedges a large slice of the grooved rocks described by Burton; it came
home with me, and is now lodged in the British Museum.
The rest of my story is told in a few words. I canoed safely down the
Ancobra River, and reached Axim on April 14. This return was made sad and
solitary by the absence of my canine friend, Nero.
A week soon passed away at the port of the Gold-region. Mr. Grant
presently returned from his excursion to the west. He showed me fine
specimens of gold collected at Newtown, the English frontier-settlement
immediately east of French Assini. I had also warned him to look out for,
and he succeeded in finding, beds of bitumen permeated with petroleum:
this material will prove valuable for fuel and for asphalting, if not for
sale. My time was wholly taken up with papering and repacking my
collection, which had now assumed formidable proportions, and time fled
the faster as the days were occupied in also fighting an impertinent
attack of ague and fever.
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