We may fairly predict a future for Axim. The town is well situated to catch the sea-breeze. The climate is equatorial, but exceptionally healthy, save after the rainy season, which here opens a month or six weeks earlier than on the leeward coast. The downfall must, however, have diminished since the times when 'the _blacks_ will tell you the wet weather lasts eleven months and twenty-nine days in the year.' The rains now begin with April and end in September. The position is south of the thermal equator (22º R. = 81 5º F.), which runs north lat. 6º on the western coast, 15º in the interior, and 10º on the eastern seaboard. [Footnote: Berghaus, following Humboldt, places the probable equator of temperature (80º 16') in N. lat. 4º, or south of Axim, rising to N. lat. 13º in Central and in Eastern Africa] Add that the average daily temperature is 75º-80º (F.), rising to 96º in the afternoon and falling after midnight to 70º, and that the wet season on the seaboard is perhaps the least sickly. We were there in January-March, during an unusually hot and dry season, following the Harmatan and the Smokes and preceding the tornadoes and the rains; yet I never felt an oppressive day,--nothing worse than Alexandria or Trieste in early August. The mornings and evenings were mostly misty; the moons were clear and the nights were tolerable. An excessive damp, which mildews and decays everything--clothes, books, metals, man--was the main discomfort. But we were living, as it were, in the open, and we neglected morning and evening fires. This will not be the case when solid and comfortable houses shall be built. The improvement of lodging and diet accounts for the better health of Anglo-Africans, as of Anglo-Indians, in the present day. Our predecessors during the early nineteenth century died of bad shelter, bad food, and bad drink.
The town, built upon a flat partly formed by cutting away the mounds and hillocks of red clay, was well laid out by Mr. Sam, the District-commissioner, after its bombardment during the Ashanti war. The main streets, or rather roads, running north-south, are avenued with shady Ganian or umbrella figs. I should prefer the bread-tree, which here flourishes. These thoroughfares are kept clean enough, and nuisances are punished, as in England. Cross lines, however, are wanted; the crooked passages between the huts do not admit the sea-breeze. Native hovels, also, should be removed from the foreshore, which, as Admiralty property, ought to be kept for public purposes. The native dwellings are composed of split bamboo-fronds (_Raphia vinifera_), thatched with the foliage of the same tree. They are mere baskets--airy, and perhaps too airy. Some are defended against wind and wet by facings of red swish; a few, like that of the 'king' and chief native traders, are built of adobes (sun-dried bricks), whitewashed outside. Of this kind, too, are the stores and the mining establishments; the 'Akankon House,' near the landing-place; the 'Gold Coast House,' in the interior; the Methodist chapel, a barn-shaped affair; the Effuenta House to the north, and the Tákwá, or French House, to the south.