The First Part Of It, Which
Forms The Main Street Of Accra, Is Remarkable.
The untidy, poverty-
stricken native houses or huts are no credit to their owners, and a
constant source of
Anxiety to a conscientious sanitary inspector.
Almost every one of them is a shop, but this does not give rise to
the animated commercial life one might imagine, owing, I presume, to
the fact that every native inhabitant of Accra who has any money to
get rid of is able recklessly to spend it in his own emporium. For
these shops are of the store nature, each after his kind, and seem
homogeneously stocked with tin pans, loud-patterned basins, iron
pots, a few rolls of cloth and bottles of American rum. After
passing these there are the Haussa lines, a few European houses, and
the cathedral; and when nearly into Christiansborg, a cemetery on
either side of the road. That to the right is the old cemetery, now
closed, and when I was there, in a disgracefully neglected state: a
mere jungle of grass infested with snakes. Opposite to it is the
cemetery now in use, and I remember well my first visit to it under
the guidance of a gloomy Government official, who said he always
walked there every afternoon, "so as to get used to the place before
staying permanently in it," - a rank waste of time and energy, by the
way, as subsequent events proved, for he is now safe off the Gold
Coast for good and all.
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