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deposit the presents and baggage in the house assigned to us. Here we were gratified by observing several of the caboceers (chiefs) pass by with their trains, the novel bands, principally composed of horns and flutes, trained to play in concert, seemed to soothe our hearing into its natural tone again by their wild melodies; whilst the immense umbrellas, made to sink and rise from the jerkings of the bearers, and the large fans waving around, refreshed us with

splendour of which astonished us. The

small currents of air, under a burning sun, elouds of dust, and a density of atmosphere

almost suffocating. We were then squeezed, at the same funeral pace, up a long street, to an open-fronted house, where we were desired by a royal messenger to wait a further invitation from the king."-(pp. 31-33.)

gun-powder was as dear as gold. Mr. Bowdich calculates Houssa to be N. E. from the Niger 20 days' journey of 18 miles each day; and the latitude and longitude to be 18° 59' N. and 3° 59' E. Boornoo was spoken of as the first empire in Africa. The Mahometans of Sennaar reckon it among the four powerful empires of the world; the other three being Turkey, Persia, and Abyssinia.

The Niger is only known to the Moors by the name of the Quolla, pronounced as Quorra by the negroes, who, from whatever countries they come, all spoke of this as the largest river with which they were acquainted; and it was the grand feature in all the routes to Ashantee, whether from Houssa, Boornoo, or the intermediate

The embassy remained about four months, leaving one of their members behind as a permanent resident. Their countries. The Niger, after leaving treatment, though subjected to the fluctuating passions of barbarians, was, upon the whole, not bad; and a foundation appears to have been laid of future intercourse with the Ashantees, and a mean opened, through them, of becoming better acquainted with the interior of Africa.

the lake Dibbri, was invariably described as dividing into two large streams; the Quolla, or the greater division, pursuing its course south. eastward, till it joined the Bahr Abiad; and the other branch running northward of cast, near to Timbuctoo, and dividing again soon afterwards - the The Moors, who seem (barbarians smaller division running northwards as they are) to be the civilisers of in- by Yahoodee, a place of great trade, ternal Africa, have penetrated to the and the larger running directly eastcapital of the Ashantees: they are ward, and entering the lake Caudi, bigoted and intolerant to Christians, under the name of Gambaroo. "The bat not sacrificers of human victims in variety of this concurrent evidence their religious ceremonies ;-nor averse respecting the Gambaroo, made an to commerce; and civilised in compa-impression on my mind," says Mr. rison to most of the idolatrous natives Bowdich, "almost amounting to conof Africa. From their merchants who viction." The same author adds, that resorted from various parts of the interior, Mr. Bowdich employed himself in procuring all the geographical details which their travels enabled them to afford. Timbuctoo they described as inferior to Houssa, and not at all comparable to Boornoo. The Moorish influence was stated to be powerful in , but not predominant. A small river goes nearly round the town, overtowing in the rains, and obliging the people of the suburbs to move to an eminence in the centre of the town where the king lives. The king, a Moorish negro called Billabahada, had a few double-barrelled guns, which were fired on great occasions; and

he found the Moors very cautious in their accounts; declining to speak unless they were positive-and frequently referring doubtful points to others whom they knew to be better acquainted with them.

The character of the present king is, upon the whole, respectable; but he is ambitious, has conquered a great deal, and is conquering still. He has a love of knowledge; and was always displeased when the European objects which attracted his attention were presented to him as gifts. His motives, he said, ought to be better understood, and more respect paid to his dignity and friendship. He is acute, capri

cious, and severe, but not devoid of For this reason, a certain number of humanity; and has incurred unpopu- cooks, butlers, and domestics of every larity on some occasions, by limiting description, are sacrificed on their the number of human sacrifices, more than was compatible with strict orthodoxy. His general subjects of discourse with the Mission were war, legislation, and mechanics. He seemed very desirous of standing well in the estimation of his European friends; and put off a conversation, once, because he was a little tipsy, and at another time because he felt himself cross and out of temper.

tombs. They have two sets of priests: the one dwell in the temples, and communicate with the idols; the other species do business as conjurors and cunning men, tell fortunes, and detect small thefts. Half the offerings to the idols are (as the priests say) thrown into the river, the other half they claim as their own. The doors of the temples are, from motives of the highest bu. manity, open to run-away slaves; but The king, four aristocratical as shut, upon a fee paid by the master to sessors, and the assembly of captains, the priest. Every person has a small are the three estates of the Ashantee set of household gods, bought of the government. The noble quartumvi- Fetishmen. They please their gods by rate, in all matters of foreign policy, avoiding particular sorts of meat; but have a veto on the king's decisions. the prohibited viand is not always the They watch, rather than share, the same. Some curry favour by eating no domestic administration; generally in-veal; some seek protection by avoiding fluencing it by their opinion, rather pork; others say, that the real monothan controlling it by their authority. poly which the celestials wish to esta In exercising his judicial function, the blish is that of beef- and so they king always retires in private with the piously and prudently rush into a course aristocracy to hear their opinions. The of mutton. course of succession in Ashantee is the brother, the sister's son, the son, and the chief slave.

The king's sisters may marry, or intrigue with any person they please, provided he is very strong and handsome; and these elevated and excellent women are always ready to set an example of submission to the laws of their country. The interest of money is about 300 per cent. A man may kill his own slave; or an inferior, for the price of seven slaves. Trifling thefts are punished by exposure. The property of the wife is distinct from that of the husband — though the king is heir to it. Those accused of witch craft are tortured to death. Slaves. if ill-treated, are allowed the liberty of transferring themselves to other

masters.

The Ashantees believe that a higher sort of god takes care of the whites, and that they are left to the care of an inferior species of deities. Still the black kings and black nobility are to go to the upper gods after death, where they are to enjoy eternally the state and luxury which was their portion on earth.

They have the customary nonsense of lucky days, trial by ordeal, and libations and relics. The most horrid and detestable of their customs is their sacrifice of human victims, and the tortures preparatory to it. This takes place at all their great festivals, or Customs, as they are called. — Some of these occur every twenty-one days; and there are not fewer than a hundred victims immolated at each. Besides these, there are sacrifices at the death of every person of rank, more or less bloody according to their dignity. On the death of his mother, the king butchered no less than three thousand victims; and on his own death this number would probably be doubled. The funeral rites of a great captain were repeated weekly for three months; and 200 persons, it is said, were slaugh tered each time, or 2400 in all. The author gives an account of the manner of these abominations, in one instance of which he was an unwilling spectator. On the funeral of the mother of Quatchie Quofie, which was by no means a great one,

'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 matched the sword from the others, the right hand of the victim was then lopped eff, he was thrown down, and his head was

med rather 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 car quarters. Other sacrifices, principally ferale, 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 family 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 in on the top of the body, and the grave instantly filled up."-(pp. 287,288.)

whom they kill; and all wear ornaments of his teeth and bones.

In their buildings a mould is made for receiving the clay, by two rows of stakes placed at a distance equal to the intended thickness of the wall; the interval is then filled with gravelly clay mixed with water, which, with the outward surface of the framework, is plastered so as to exhibit the appearance of a thick mud wall. The captains have pillars which assist to support the roof, and form a proscenium, or open front. The steps and raised floors of the rooms are clay and stone, with a thick layer of red earth, washed and painted daily.

"While the walls are still soft, they formed moulds or frame-works of the patterns in delicate slips of cane, connected by grass. The two first slips (one end of each being inserted in the soft wall) projected the relief, commonly mezzo: the interstices were then filled up with the plaster, and assumed the appearance depicted. The poles or pillars were sometimes encircled by twists of cane, intersecting each other, which, being filled up with thin plaster, resembled the lozenge and cable ornaments of the Anglo-Norman order; the quatre-foil was very common, and by no means rude, from the symmetrical bend of the cane which formed it. I saw a few pillars (after they had been

*About a hundred persons, mostly culprits reserved, are generally sacrificed, in different quarters of the town, at this custan (that is, at the feast for the new year). Several slaves were also sacrificed at Ban-squared with the plaster), with numerous tama, over the large brass pan, their blood minaling with the various vegetable and animal matter within (fresh and putrefied), to complete the charm, and produce invineble fetish. All the chiefs kill several saves, that their blood may flow into the de from whence the new yam is taken. Those who cannot afford to kill slaves, take the head of one already sacrificed, and place it on the hole." (p. 279.)

slips of cane pressed perpendicularly on to the wet surface, which being covered again with a very thin coat of plaster, closely resembled fluting. When they formed a large arch, they inserted one end of a thick piece of cane in the wet clay of the floor or base, and, bending the other over, inserted it in the same manner; the entablature was filled up with wattle-work plastered over. Arcades and piazzas were common. A The Ashantees are very superior in whitewash, very frequently renewed, was dscipline and courage to the water-side made from a clay in the neighbourhood. Africans: they never pursue when it Of course the plastering is very frail, and in the relief frequently discloses the edges is near sunset: the general is always of the cane, giving, however, a piquant in the rear, and the fugitives are in-effect, auxiliary to the ornament. The doors stantly put to death. The army is prohibited, during the active part of the campaign, from all food but meal, which each man carries in a small bag by his side, and mixes in his hands with the first water he comes to; no fires are allowed, lest their position should be betrayed; they eat little select bits of the first enemy's heart

were an entire piece of cotton wood, cut with great labour out of the stems or buttresses of that tree; battens variously cut and painted were afterwards nailed across. So disproportionate was the price of labour to that of provision, that I gave but two tokoos for a slab of cotton wood, five feet by three. The locks they use are from Houssa, and quite original: one will be sent to the British Museum. Where they raised

a first floor, the under room was divided | lation of Coomassie was above 100,000: into two by an intersecting wall, to support but this is thought, by the gentlemen the rafters for the upper room, which were of the Mission, to allude rather to the generally covered with a frame-work thickly plastered over with red ochre. I saw but population collected on great occasions, than the permanent residents, not comone attempt at flooring with plank; it was cotton wood shaped entirely with an adze, puted by them at more than 15,000. and looked like a ship's deck. The windows The markets were daily; and the were open wood-work, carved in fanciful articles for sale, beef, mutton, wildfigures and intricate patterns, and painted hog, deer, monkeys' flesh, fowls, yams, red; the frames were frequently cased in plaintains, corn, sugar-cane, rice, pepgold, about as thick as cartridge paper. pers, vegetable butter, oranges, papans, What surprised me most, and is not the pine-apples, bananas, salt and dried least of the many circumstances deciding fish, large snails smoke-dried; palmtheir great superiority over the generality wine, rum, pipes, beads, looking-glasses; of negroes, was the discovery that every house had its cloaca, besides the common sandals, silk, cotton cloth, powder, ones for the lower orders without the town." small pillars, white and blue thread, -(pp, 305, 306.) and calabashes. The cattle in Ashantee are as large as English cattle; their sheep are hairy. They have no implement but the hoe; have two crops of corn in the year; plant their yams at Christmas, and dig them up in September. Their plantations, extensive and orderly, have the appearance of hop-gardens well fenced in, and regn. larly planted in lines, with a broad walk around, and a hut at each wickergate, where a slave and his family reside to protect the plantation. All the fruits mentioned as sold in the market grew in spontaneous abundance, as did the sugar-cane. The oranges were of a large size and exquisite flavour. There were no cocoa trees. The berry which gives to acids the flavour of sweets, making limes taste like honey, is common here. The castor-oil plant rises to a large tree. The cotton tree sometimes rises to the height of 150 feet.

The rubbish and offal of each house are burnt every morning at the back of the street; and they are as nice in their dwellings as in their persons. The Ashantee loom is precisely on the same principles as the English: the fineness, variety, brilliancy, and size of their cloths is astonishing. They paint white cloths not inelegantly, as fast as an European can write. They excel in pottery, and are good goldsmiths. Their weights are very neat brass casts of almost every animal, fruit, and vegetable known in the country. The king's scales, blowpan, boxes, weights, and pipe-tongs were neatly made of the purest gold. They work finely in iron, tan leather, and are excellent carpenters.

Mr. Bowdich computes the number of men capable of bearing arms to be 204,000. The disposable force is 150,000; the population a million; the number of square miles 14,000. Po- The great obstacle to the improvelygamy is tolerated to the greatest ment of commerce with the Ashantee. extent; the king's allowance is 3333 people (besides the jealousy natural to wives; and the full complement is barbarians) is our rejection of the slave always kept up. Four of the principal trade, and the continuance of that destreets in Coomassie are half a mile testable traffic by the Spaniards. While long, and from 50 to 100 yards wide. the Mission was in that country, one The streets were all named, and a thousand slaves left Ashantee for two superior captain in charge of each. Spanish schooners on the coast.-How The street where the Mission was is an African monarch to be taught lodged was called Apperemsoo, or that he has not a right to turn human Cannon Street; another street was creatures into rum and tobacco? or called Daebrim, or Great Market Street; that the nation which prohibits such an another Prison Street, and so on. A intercourse are not his enemies? To plan of the town is given. The Ashan- have free access to Ashantee, would tees persisted in saying, that the popu-command Dagwumba. The people of

Inta and Dagwumba being commercial, rather than warlike, an intercourse with them would be an intercourse with the interior, as far as Timbuctoo and Houssa northwards, and Cassina, if not Boornoo, eastwards.

and Dagwumba. The river Volta flows into the Gulf of Guinea, in latitude 7° north. It is navigable, and by the natives navigated for ten days, to Odentee. Now, from Odentee to Sallagha, the capital of the kingdom of Inta, is After the observation of Mr. Bowdich, but four days' journey; and seven days' senior officer of the Mission, follows the journey from Sallagha, through the narrative of Mr. Hutchinson, left as Inta Jam of Zengoo, is Yahndi, the chargé d'affaires, upon the departure capital of Dagwumba. Yahndi is deof the other gentlemen. Mr. Hutchin-scribed to be beyond comparison larger son mentions some white men residing than Coomassie, the houses much better at Yenné, whom he supposes to have built and ornamented. The Ashantees been companions of Park; and Ali who had visited it, told Mr. Bowdich Baba, a man of good character and they had frequently lost themselves in consideration, upon the eve of depar- the streets. The king has been conture from these regions, assured him, verted by the Moors, who have settled that there were two Europeans then themselves there in great numbers. Mr. resident at Timbuctoo. -In his obser- Lucas calls it the Mahometan kingdom vations on the river Gaboon, Mr. Bow- of Degomba; and it was represented dich has the following information on to him as peculiarly wealthy and civithe present state of the slave trade: lised. The markets of Yahndi are described as animated scenes of commerce, constantly crowded with merchants from almost all the countries of the interior. It seems to us, that the best way of becoming acquainted with Africa, is not to plan such sweeping expeditions as have been lately sent out by Government, but to submit to become acquainted with it by degrees, and to acquire by little and little a knowledge of the best methods of arranging expeditions. The kingdom of Dagwumba, for instance, is not 200 miles from a well-known and regular water carriage, on the Volta. Perhaps it is nearer, but the distance is not greater than this. It is one of the most commercial nations in Africa, and one of the most civilised: and yet it is utterly unknown, except by report, to Europeans. Then why not plan an

"Three Portuguese, one French, and two large Spanish ships, visited the river for saves during our stay; and the master of a Liverpool vessel assured me that he had fallen in with twenty-two between Gaboon and the Congo. Their grand rendezvous is Mayumba. The Portuguese of St. Thomas's and Prince's Islands send small schooner boats to Gaboon for slaves, which are kept, after they are transported this short distance, until the coast is clear for shipping them to America. A third large Spanish ship, well armed, entered the river the right before we quitted it, and hurried our exit, for one of that character was committing piracy in the neighbouring rivers. Having suffered from falling into their hands before, I felicitated myself on the escape. We were afterwards chased and boarded by a Spanish armed schooner, with three hundred slaves on board; they only desired provisions."

These are the most important ex-expedition to Dagwumba? the extracts from this publication, which is certainly of considerable importance, from the account it gives us of a people hitherto almost entirely unknown; and from the light which the very diligent and laborious inquiries of Mr. Bow-to proceed with much greater ease and dich have thrown upon the geography of Africa, and the probability held out to us of approaching the great kingdos on the Niger, by means of an intercourse, by no means difficult to be established with the kingdoms of Inta

pense of which would be very trifling, and the issue known in three or four months. The information procured from such a wise and moderate undertaking would enable any future mission

safety into the interior; or prevent them from proceeding, as they hitherto have done, to their own destruction. We strongly believe, with Mr. Bowdich, that this is the right road to the Niger.

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