The town of Cape Coast is one of the most filthy and unhealthy known to the civilized world. In 1872 we find Governor Hennessy thus writing of it--“It was my disagreeable duty to tell the late Administrator that I found the town of Cape Coast ... to be the most filthy and apparently neglected place that I had ever seen under anything like a civilized Government.” That description answers perfectly even at the present day. After the Ashanti war of 1873-4 some attempts at improvement were commenced during the administration of Governor Strahan; but on the removal of the seat of government to Accra these were discontinued, and the condition of the town is now as bad as ever. With a population of some nine or ten thousand native inhabitants, addicted to the most repulsive habits, Cape Coast does not possess any system of drainage, or even the most primitive requirements of sanitation. Festering heaps of pollution, and stagnant pools of foul water, lie among and around the houses; while every by-street, passage, and open space, is used by the natives as a place in which to deposit their offal and refuse. The town can indeed boast of one surface-drain, built of masonry and about a foot in breadth, which was originally intended to carry away the water of a contaminated brook, and drain some plague-breeding pools in the lower part of the town; but the genius of a colonial engineer who constructed this colossal work in 1875 so planned it that it stands some two feet above the level of the surrounding earth like a wall; and as water in this part of the world has not yet acquired the art of climbing up a vertical height it runs anywhere but where it was intended to. Besides, after rain, this insignificant rivulet becomes a stream three or four feet deep and several yards broad. The fringe of bush all round the town is defiled to such an extent as to be almost impassable, while to the east of the castle, and only 450 yards distant from it, is a rock on which has been deposited the accumulated corruption of years, and which, by local regulation, is still put to the same use. With such surroundings it can be imagined that it avails but little to keep the Castle, and buildings in actual occupation by Europeans, in a proper sanitary condition.