not quite so, for these cool and roomy chambers serve to house the
native constabulary and their extensive families.

This being done, I was taken up an unmitigated hill, on whose summit
stands Fort William, a pepper-pot-like structure now used as a
lighthouse. The view from the top was exceedingly lovely and
extensive. Beneath, and between us and the sea, lay the town in the
blazing sun. In among its solid stone buildings patches of native
mud-built huts huddled together as though they had been shaken down
out of a sack into the town to serve as dunnage. Then came the
snow-white surf wall, and across it the blue sea with our steamer
rolling to and fro on the long, regular swell, impatiently waiting
until Sunday should be over and she could work cargo. Round us on
all the other sides were wooded hills and valleys, and away in the
distance to the west showed the white town and castle of Elmina and
the nine-mile road thither, skirting the surf-bound seashore, only
broken on its level way by the mouth of the Sweet River. Over all
was the brooding silence of the noonday heat, broken only by the
dulled thunder of the surf.

After seeing these things we started down stairs, and on reaching
ground descended yet lower into a sort of stone-walled dry moat, out
of which opened clean, cool, cellar-like chambers tunnelled into the
earth. These, I was informed, had also been constructed to keep
slaves in when they were the staple export of the Gold Coast. They
were so refreshingly cool that I lingered looking at them and their
massive doors, ere being marched up to ground level again, and down
the hill through some singularly awful stenches, mostly arising from
rubber, into the big Wesleyan church in the middle of the town. It
is a building in the terrible Africo-Gothic style, but it compares