also a pattern resembling an epaulette on each shoulder, and an ornament like a full blown rose, one leaf rising above another, until it covered his whole breast; his kneebands were of aggry beads, and his anclestrings of gold ornaments of the most delicate workmanship, small drums, sankos, stools, swords, guns, and birds, clustered together; his sandals, of a soft white leather, were embossed across the instep band with small gold and silver cases of saphies; he was seated on a low chair, richly ornamented with gold; he wore a pair of gold castanets on his finger and thumb, which he clapped to enforce silence. The belts of the guards behind his chair were cased in gold, and covered with small jaw-bones of the same metal; the elephants' taits, waving like a small cloud before him, were spangled with gold, and large plumes of feathers were flourished amid them. His eunuch presided over these attendants, wearing only one massy picce of gold about his neck the royal stool, entirely cased in gold, was displayed under a splendid umbreila, with drums, sankos, horns, and various musical instruments, cased in gold, about the thickness of cartridge paper: large circles of gold hung by scarlet cloth from the swords of state, the sheaths as well as the handles of which were also cased; hatchets of the same were intermixed with them; the breasts of the Ocrahs, and various attendants, were adorned with large stars, stools, crescents, and gossamer wings of solid gold." pp. 37-39. They were then seated under a tree, when the chiefs, with their respective bands, passed in succession before them, presenting a series of scenes equally magnificent and singular. The whole number of troops thus paraded are estimated at 30,000. No communication took place on this day between the king and the mission; but on the following day they were introduced, "and delivered their presents, which were graciously received, and the whole passed in a very amicable manner. The next interview was more stormy, and its incidents so characteristic, that we shall introduce as much of it as our limits will admit. "We were sent for to the king's house; he was only attended by his privy counsellors; he expressed much delight at the camera obscura and instruments. He said, The Englishmen knew more than the Dutchmen or Danes; that black men knew nothing.' He then ordered our people to be dismissed, said he would look at the telescope in a larger place, that now he wished to talk with us. He again acVOL. IV. knowledged the gratification of Tuesday, and desired Mr James to explain to him two notes which he produced, written by the Governor in Chief, at the request of Amooney, king of Annamaboe, and Adokoo, chief of the Braffoes, making over to Sai, king of Ashantee, four ackies per month of their company's pay, as a pledge of their allegiance and the termination of hostilities. The impression seemed instantly to have rooted itself into the king's mind, that this was the Governor's individual act, or that he had instanced it: his counsellors became enraged, they were all impatience, we all anxiety. Tell the white men,' said the king, what they did yesterday made me much pleasure; I was glad we were to be friends; but to-day I see they come to put shame upon my face; they break my heart too much. The English know with my own powder, with my own shot, I drove the Fantees under their forts, I spread my sword over them, they were all killed, and their books from the fort are mine. I can do as much for the English as the Fantees; they know this well; they know I have only to send a captain to get all the heads of the Fantees. These white men cheat me, they think to make 'Shantee fool; they pretend to make friends with me, and they join with the Fantees to cheat me, to put shame upon my face; this makes the blood come from my heart.' This was reported by his linguist with a passion of gesture and utterance scarcely inferior to the king's; the irritation spread throughout the circle, and swelled even to uproar." pp. 46, 47. To this angry discourse Mr James merely replied, "That he would go back and tell the Governor all that the king said." Deep dissatisfaction was now felt by the other members of the mission, that their chief should do nothing to assuage the king's wrath on account of the four ackies, which, it seems, he considered a sum so small, as to render the offer an insult to him. He then asked, if the English had not great books which shewed all the sums that were paid or received, and if Mr James had not seen these books. Mr James said he had seen them, but did not recollect any thing relative to the subject in question. The king grew continually warmer, and at length exclaimed, bring me the heads of all the Fantees under the forts; the white men know I can do this, I have only to speak to my cap tains. The Dutch Governor does not cheat me; he does not shame me before the Fantees; he sends me the whole 4 oz. a month. The Danes do not shame me, and the English four ackies a month is nothing to me; I can send a captain for all; they wish war.' He drew his beard into his mouth, biting it, and rushing abruptly from his seat, exclaimed, Shantee foo! Shantee foo! ah! ah!' Then shaking his finger at us with the most angry aspect, would have burst from us with the exclamation, If a black man had brought me this message, I would have had his head cut off before me.' Mr James was silent." p. 49. Mr Bowdich, the second member of the mission, now deemed it incumbent on him to step forward, and occupy the place, for which his superior appeared to have shewn himself unfit. He accordingly made a speech, which he describes as producing a wondrous effect the storm was at once laid, and after the council separated, the king's satisfaction with what he had said was conveyed to him in the evening, in the following very intelligent words. Indeed, it is difficult to make out either the ground of quarrel or the ground of reconcilement. "The king wishes you good night; this is his palaver and yours, you must not speak it to any one else, the white men come to cheat him. The king recollects the face of the white man who spoke to him to-day, he likes him much, he wishes he would talk the palaver; the king likes the other white men who stood up with him very much," &c. &c. Mr Bowdich's interference, however contrary to the general rules of embassy, seems to have been viewed by the British government as justified by the circumstances of the case; for Mr James was recalled, and Mr Bowdich placed at the head of the mission. During a residence of four months at the court of Coomassie, that gentleman experienced several storms, and was even at one time in apprehension of personal violence; but he at length succeeded in accommodating all differences, and concluding a treaty advantageous to both parties. The following are the principal heads of the information collected relative to this newly visited kingdom. Ashantee contains about 14,000 square miles, and a million of inhabitants, being half the size of Scotland, and somewhat more than that proportion of population. A great part of the country is covered with wood; but that which is cultivated is well inclosed, kept very clean, and yields large crops of corn, yams, fruits, and vegetables. The Ashantee loom differs little from that of Europe, and they manufacture cloths of great brilliancy and fineness. They excel also in pottery and goldsmith's work, though in these arts they are surpassed by the countries to the south. Their houses, though constructed only of earth and wood, display a considerable degree of art and ornainent. Upon the whole, both with regard to the useful and the fine arts, they appear to display a sensible superiority over any other part of native Africa yet visited by Europeans. The government of Ashantee is monarchical, and nearly absolute, though admitting a certain control of the caboceers or chief men. They leave the king nearly unmolested in the internal administration of the state; but they claim a share in all military questions, where " their voice is still for war;" and they hold, that, without their interference, the momarch might be in danger of sinking into inglorious ease. All the energies of the state are directed to war; the dignities are all military; and every subject of an age fit to serve must repair, at a moment's warning, to the royal standard. Accordingly, Ashantee has attained a decided pre-eminence in this part of Africa, and has rendered tributary several kingdoms, more populous and extensive than itself. The succession to the crown, as in other African kingdoms, is entirely in the female line; the king being succeeded, not by his own, but by his sister's son. The queen mother is not required to observe any very strict laws of decorum, it being only expected that her husband or favourites shall be distinguished by bodily strength and vigour, in order that the royal race may not degenerate. It must not be concealed that the comparative civilization, which appears in some parts of the Ashantee system, is alloyed by features of the deepest barbarism. The lower orders are held in complete thraldom by the king or chiefs, and can be put to death or sold to slavery at pleasure. Polygamy is practised to the most unlimited extent. The king is allowed by law 3333 wives, which number is carefully kept up; and those of the chiefs being in proportion, a great proportion of the inferior orders are reduced to a state of celibacy. But the deepest blot on the national character consists in the frightful extent of human sacrifices. These are offered by the chiefs on all occasions, when either the gods are to be propitiated, or still more at the death of any member of the family. Aristocratic ideas are carried to such a height, that the station of the departed in the future world is supposed almost entirely to depend on his rank in the present; but this can be secured only by observing all the appointed ceremonies, and particularly by sending a numerous train to accompany him. At the death of any of the royal family, hosts of victims are immolated. The king, at the funeral of his mother, gave himself 3000; and all the large towns were expected to produce their contingent. The mission were witness to a sacrifice or custom, as it is called, on a small scale, for the mother of a personage called Quatchie Quofie, who was connected with the royal family. "We walked to Assafoo about twelve o'clock; the vultures were hovering around two headless trunks, scarcely cold. Several troops of women, from fifty to a hundred each, were dancing by in movements resembling skaiting, lauding and bewailing the deceased in the most dismal, yet not discordant strains; audible, from the vast number, at a considerable distance. Other troops carried the rich cloths and silks of the deceased on their heads, in shining brass pans, twisted and stuffed into crosses, cases, globes, and a fanciful variety of shapes only to be imagined, and imposing, at a small distance, the appearance of rude deities. The faces, arms, and breasts of these women were profusely daubed with red earth, in horrid emulation of those who had succeeded in besmearing themselves with the blood of the victims. The crowd was overbearing; horns, drums, and muskets, yells, groans, and screcches, invaded our hearing, with as many horrors as were crowded on our sight. Now and then a victim was hurried by, generally dragged or run along at full speed; the uncouth dress, and the exulting countenances of those who surrounded him, likening them to as many fiends. I observed apa thy more frequently than despair or emotion, in the looks of the victims. The chiefs and captains were arriving in all directions, announced by the firing of muskets, and the peculiar flourishes of their horns, many of which were by this time familiar to us; they were then habited plainly as warriors, and were soon lost to our sight in the crowd. As Old Odumata passed in his hammock, he bade us observe him well when he passed us again; this prepared us in a small degree. Presently. the king's arrival in the market-place was announced, the crowd rolled towards it impetuously, but the soldiery hacked on all sides indiscriminately, and formed a passage for the procession. Quatchie Quolike a Bacchanal, drunk with the adulafie hurried by, plunging from side to side tion of his bellowing supporters; his attitudes were responsive to the horror and barbarism of the exultations which inspired them. The victims, with large knives driven through their cheeks, eyed him with indifference; he them, with a savage joy bordering on frenzy; insults were aggravated on the one, flattery lavished on the other. Our disgust was beguiled for had just past us in their swarthy clothes, an instant by surprise. The chiefs, who and the dark gloomy habits of war, now followed Quatchie Quofie, glistening in all the splendour of their fetish dresses; the sprightly variety of their movements ill accorded with the ceremony. Old Odumata's vest was covered with fetish, cased invariably in gold or silver. A variety of extraordinary ornament and novel insignia, courted and reflected the sun in every direction. It was like a splendid pantomime after a Gothic tragedy. "We followed to the market-place. The king, and the chiefs not immediately connected with Quatchie Quofie, were seated under their canopies, with the usual insignia and retinue, and lined about the half of a circle, apparently half a mile in circumference; the soldiery completed it; their respective chiefs situated amongst them. Thirteen victims surrounded by their executioners, whose black shaggy caps and vests gave them the appearance of bears rather than men, were pressed together by the crowd to the left of the king. raded without the circle, vociferating the The troops of women before described padirge. Rum and palm wine were flowing copiously; horns and drums were exerted even to frenzy. In an instant, there was a burst of musketry near the king, and it spread and continued incessantly, around the circle, for upwards of an hour. soldiers kept their stations, but the chiefs, after firing, bounded once round the area with the gesture and extravagance of madthem in flags, occasionally firing in all the men; their panting followers enveloping The attitudes of a scaramouch, and incessantly bellowing the strong names of their exulting chief, whose musket they snatched from his hands directly he had fired. An old hag, described as the head fetish woman of the family, screamed and plunged about in the midst of the fire, as if in the great est agonies. The greater the chief, the heavier the charge of powder he is allowed to fire; the heaviest charge recollected, was that fired by the king on the death of his sister, eighteen ackies, or an ounce avoirdupoise. Their blunderbusses and long guns were almost all braced closely with the cordage of the country; they were generally supported by their attendants whilst they fired; several did not appear to recover it for nearly a minute; Odunata's old frame seemed shaken almost to dissolution. Many made a point of collecting near us, just within the circle, and firing as close as possible to startle us; the frequent bursting of their muskets made this rather disagreeable. The firing abated, they drank freely from the bowls of palm wine, religiously pouring a small quantity on the ground before they raised them to their lips. The principal females of the family, many of them very handsome, and of elegant figures, came forward to dance; dressed generallly in yellow silk, with a silver knife hung by a chain round their necks; one with a gold, another with a silver horn; a few were dressed as fetish women; an umbrella was held over the grand-daughter as she danced. The Ashantees dance incomparably better than the people of the water side, indeed, elegantly; the sexes do not dance separately, as in Fantee, but the man encircles the woman with a piece of silk, which he generally flirts in his right hand, supports her round the waist, receives her elbows in the palms of his hands, and a variety of figures approximating, with the time and movement, very closely to the waltz." "A dash of sheep and rum was exchanged between the king and Quatchie Quofie, and the drums announced the sacrifice of the victims. All the chiefs first visited them in turn; I was not near enough to distinguish wherefore. The executioners wrangled and struggled for the office, and the indifference with which the first poor creature looked on, in the torture he was from the knife passed through his cheeks, was remarkable; the nearest executioner snatched the sword from the others, the right hand of the victim was then lopped off, he was thrown down, and his head was sawed ra. ther than cut off; it was cruelly prolonged, I will not say wilfully. Twelve more were dragged forward, but we forced our way through the crowd, and retired to our quarters. Other sacrifices, principally female, were made in the bush where the body was buried. It is usual to wet the grave' with the blood of a freeman of respectability. All the retainers of the fa mily being present, and the heads of all the victims deposited in the bottom of the grave, several are unsuspectingly called on in a hurry to assist in placing the coffin or basket, and just as it rests on the heads or skulls, a slave from behind stuns one of these freemen by a violent blow, followed by a deep gash in the back part of the neck, and he is rolled on the top of the body, and the grave instantly filled up. A sort of carnival, varied by firing, drinking, singing, and dancing, was kept up in Assafoo for seve ral days, the chiefs generally visiting it every evening, or sending their linguists with a dash of palm wine or rum to Quat chie Quofie; and I was given to under. stand, that, but for the approaching war, and necessary economy of powder, there would have been eight great customs instead of one for this woman, one weekly, the king himself firing at the last. The last day, all the females in any way connected with the family (who are not allow. ed to eat for three days after the death, though they may drink as much palm wine as they please) paraded round the town, singing a complitnent and thanks to all those who had assisted in making the custom." "On the death of a king, all the customs which have been made for the subjects who have died during his reign must (the human sacrifices, as well as the carou be simultaneously repeated by the families, sals and pageantry,) to amplify that for the monarch, which is also solemnized independently, but at the same time, in every brothers, sons, and nephews of the king, excess of extravagance and barbarity. The affecting temporary insanity, burst forth with their muskets, and fire promiscuously amongst the crowd; even a man of rank, if they meet him, is their victim; nor is their murder of him or any other, on such an occasion, visited or prevented. scene can scarcely be imagined. Few persons of rank dare to stir from their houses for the first two or three days, but religionsly drive forth all their vassals and slaves, as the most acceptable composition of their own absence." pp. 284-288. The The king of Ashantee may now be considered as master of the Gold Coast, where nothing except the European posts is able to resist him. On the north he possesses dependencies kingdoms of Inta and Dagwumba, still more valuable, particularly the civilized than Ashantee; but, being which are both more populous and inferior in military prowess, they have been obliged to own his supremacy. Mr Bowdich heard also of a number of other kingdoms, extending to the frequently. He was much gratified with the specimens of African Arabic at the end of Mr Jackson's work, and read them fluently. I visited him the next day, when he sent hastily for a Moor, who, he told Timbuctoo. This man expressing no surme, was very learned, and just come from prise when he first saw me, Baba explained it, by telling me, spontaneously, that this Moor had seen three white men before at Boussa. I eagerly inquired the particulars of the novelty, and they were again repeated to Baba, and were thus interpreted :-That, some years ago, a vessel with masts suddenly appeared on the Quolla or Niger near Boussa, with three white men, and some black. The natives, encouraged by these strange men, took off provisions for sale, were well paid, and received presents besides. It seems the vessel had anchored. The next day, perceiving the vessel going on, the natives hurried after her, (the Moor protested, from their anxiety to save her from some sunken rocks, with which the Quolla abounds,) but the white men mistaking, and thinking they pursued for a bad purpose, deterred them. The vessel soon after struck, the men jumped into the water, and tried to swim, but We cannot conclude this sketch could not for the current, and were drownwithout giving the particulars which ed. our traveller learned concerning the unfortunate Mungo Park. They are not very satisfactory; but, such as they are, they cannot but be interesting. "I paid," says Mr Bowdich, "my first private visit to Baba, the chief Moor, and wook some pens, paper, ink, and pencils with me as a present; the paper and peneils were much esteemed, but he preferred his reed and vegetable ink. He received me courteously, and was contemplating a curiously intricate figure like a horoscope; the MS. was filled with them. He laid his finger on it, and said, If you have any hard palaver, this can make me settle it for you when no other person can; or, if you have any dear friend in England you wish to see, tell me the name, and this shall bring him to you. I thanked him, observing, that, when Englishmen knew their palaver was right, they always left it to God, and that England was too good a place for me to wish any one I regarded to leave it. His disciples and pupils were writing on wooden boards, like those Mr Park describes. When a charm was applied for, one of the oldest wrote the body of it, and gave it to Baba, who added a sort of cabalistical mark, and gave it a mysterious fold; the credu lous native snatched it eagerly as it was held out to him, paid the gold, and hurried away to inclose it in the richest case he could afford. 1 had a long conversation with Baba, and he begged me to visit him He thought some of their clothes were there were any books or papers.' now at Wauwaw, but he did not believe This spontaneous narrative, so artlessly told, made a powerful impression on my mind. I saw the man frequently afterwards; his manners were very mild, and he never asked me for the most trifling present. He drew me a chart before he went away; and I dispatched some certificates for Major Peddie by him, indorsed with Baba's recommendations. I heard exactly the same thing afterwards from another Moor, but he had not been an eye-witness. I begged Mr Hutchinson, when I left Coomassie, to note any other report on the subject of Mr Park's death, and he afterwards sent me the MS., a translation of which is in the appendix." pp. 90, 91. This document in the appendix contradicts the assertion that no offensive act was committed by the natives. There are two translations of it, and both agree in the main fact, which corroborates but too entirely the preceding statement of this enterprising traveller's fall. We insert them, as their variations are as curious as their matter is interesting. Translations of a Manuscript descriptive of MR SALAME'S TRANSLATION. [The words in italics, so distinguished at that gen tleman's request, not being in the original] |