It is quite possible, however, that within a generation the most alluring wealth of the country will be its treasures of gold. This precious metal is found in a belt extending from the Gold Coast inland three hundred and fifty miles. Of the productiveness of the gold mines or pits, as they are called, we can judge but little otherwise than by the meagreness of the facilities of the natives for collecting gold, and by the amount found among the different tribes. From what can be learned I am led to believe that the great enterprise that shall yet stir the thought of the mercantile world in behalf of this region will be that of the gold hunter. In support of this view we have facts before us like the following: The king of the Ashantees is covered with golden ornaments. He is served by his cook with a golden spoon. His spies, to the number of a thousand, wear golden breastplates, his officers carry gold-hilted swords, and his subjects use gold dust for money. The chiefs of the land manufacture golden images to display their wealth, while their attendants are embellished with golden badges. Even on the great plateau, three hundred miles inland, gold is the money of the country. In Bouré the people do nothing but dig up gold, which they exchange for food with the neighboring tribes. The indications certainly are, that if so much gold is secured by native women, who wash out a little surface sand in their simple gourds, mines of wealth must lie beneath awaiting the more powerful machinery of an American civilization.
(4.) We come now to notice the internal improvements projected for opening up this country to commerce and the higher development of its people. Lines of steamers ply from the Senegal to the Niger, and ports are opened where trade is carried on equal in amount to $20,000,000 annually. The Niger and its tributaries afford navigable waters for 3,500 miles, enabling the merchant to proceed with boats from Timbuctoo to the Atlantic. Steamers already ply upon this river and inland trade is rapidly developing.
At present there are many obstacles to overcome, of which the superstition of the natives is not the least. There is, however, a project full of promise for reaching this country. By recent surveys it has been ascertained that opposite the Canary Islands, in latitude 28° north, running five hundred miles south-east in the Great Desert, there is a sink two hundred feet below the level of the Atlantic, extending to within one hundred miles of Timbuctoo, the great city of Central Africa. This sink or depression has a width of one hundred and twenty miles, and contains sixty thousand square miles of land. Explorers agree that a channel once connected its north-western extremity with the Atlantic, where it terminated in a sand-bank, which prevented the waters of the ocean from flowing into its bed. Its mouth is formed between perpendicular rocks, and measures about two and a half miles in width, and is blocked by a sand-bar, three hundred yards across, with a height of thirty feet above the sea. All that is needed is to excavate a ship canal three hundred yards long through the sand-bar, and the inland sea will be speedily formed. When this is accomplished the Mendi country and its neighborhood will be a vast island, approachable from many directions, and a belt of civilization will be closed in until the whole area is blessed with peace and abundance. Then “Afric’s sunny fountains” will “roll down their golden sands” into the lap of the older civilizations, and receive in return the riper and richer results of the heaven-born blessings of the Gospel.