Nor did the seismic
movements cease till July 15, when I made my escape.
Men who remembered as far back as March 1858, when Colonel Bird ruled the
land, declared that Akra had never felt an earthquake; but on the morning
of April 14, 1862, there had been a sharp shock followed by sundry lighter
movements, and lastly by the most severe. The direction was said to be
north-south, and it was supposed to be the tail of a great earthquake,
whose focus was behind Sierra Leone. A rumbling, like the rolling of guns,
had been heard under the main square of Akra; the shocks were felt by the
ships in the roads, and the disturbance was reported to have been even
more severe up-country. When the wave reached Agbome, Gelele, King of
Dahome, with characteristic filial piety, exclaimed, 'Don't you see that
my father is calling for blood, and is angry because we are not sending
him more men?' Whereupon he at once ordered three prisoners from Ishagga
to take the road to Ku-to-men, Hades or Dead-land.] so tossed and broke
up the hill-strata of Akim that all the people flocked to the diggings and
dispensed with the chimney-holes generally sunk. The frontier-village of
Adadentum, on the Prah, was nearly buried by a landslip from a spur of the
'Queeshoh Range.
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