Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/53

 building, &c. Alas! none of the missions save the Roman Catholic teach the thing that it is most important the natives should learn, in the face of the conditions that European government of the Coast has induced, namely, improved methods of agriculture, and plantation work.

The Wesleyan Mission has only four white ministers here. Native ministers there are seventeen, and the rest of the staff is entirely native, consisting of 70 Catechists, 144 day school teachers, 386 Sunday-school teachers, and 405 local preachers. The total number of fully accredited members of this sect in 1893 was stated in the Gold Coast Annual to be 7,066.

The total amount of money raised by this mission on the Gold Coast in 1893 was £5,338 14s. 9d. This is a very remarkable sum and most creditable to the native members of the sect, for almost all the other native Christian bodies are content to be in a state of pauperised dependency on British subscriptions. The headquarters of the Wesleyan Mission were, up to last year, at Cape Coast, but now they have been removed to Aburi on the hills some twenty-six miles behind Accra, and Cape Coast is no longer the head-quarters of any governmental or religious affair. The Government removed to Accra from Cape Coast several years ago, on account of the great unhealthiness of the latter place and in the hope that Accra would prove less fatal. Unfortunately this hope has not been realised; moreover the landing at Accra is worse than at Cape Coast, and the supply of fresh water very poor.

Accra is one of the five West Coast towns that look well from the sea. The others don't look well from anywhere. First in order of beauty comes San. Paul de Loanda; then Cape Coast with its satellite Elmina, then Gaboon, then Accra with its satellite Christiansborg, and lastly, Sierra Leone.

What there is of beauty in Accra is oriental in type. Seen from the sea, Fort St. James on the left and Christiansborg Castle on the right, both almost on shore level, give, with an outcrop of sandy dwarf cliffs, a certain air of balance and strength to the town, though but for these and the two old castles, Accra would be but a poor place and a flimsy, for the