292 William F. Daniell, Esq., on the Ethnography of 



trolling elements introduced into their moral and political codes, 

 within the date of the last three centuries, these preliminary ob- 

 servations might be rendered applicable to the present status and 

 condition of this remnant of a people who now claim our deep and 

 merited consideration. ,, ^ \(, ^.1iupi:Jnx? srii r 



Part I. — Manners and Customs. 



Previously to the consideration of the moral and physical outlines 

 of these people, and other historical subjects connected with their 

 aboriginal development, it may perhaps be deemed more appropriate 

 to enter into a brief descriptive detail of the various customs and in- 

 stitutions peculiar to these tribes, which may be conveniently 

 arranged under the succeeding heads of — dress, cleanliness, births and 

 nomenclature, marriages, deaths and funeral ceremonies, division of 

 time, inheritances, and their laws, currency, architecture, and erection 

 of towns, markets, and harvest, festivals, &c. 



Dress, 8fc. — The dress of the natives does not materially deviate 

 from that uniformity of style, which may be said to be charac- 

 teristic of the cognate tribes of the Gold Coast, unless it is in some of 

 those anomalous variations, that are to be observed among the 

 females of certain localities, where they have probably been tole- 

 rated from politic or conscientious motives. That of the men is 

 composed of two coverings, the first of which is an inner fold of cloth, 

 tightly investing the loins and passing from between the nates for- 

 ward, to the front of the pubes, where it is secured, after enclosing 

 in a kind of suspensory bag, the organs of generation. The second 

 consists of an external or proper garment, merely comprehending a 

 few yards of chintz, tom coffee, or ramal, which, loosely wrapped 

 round the middle, conceals the preceding one, its extremities being 

 inversely folded within each other, or permitted to dangle from the 

 arms, over which they are thrown on account of the greater length 

 accorded to individuals of an elevated rank. On extraordinary oc- 

 casions, and august festivals, silken and other costly fabrics usurp 

 their place. 



The costume of the women nearly resembles that of the opposite 

 sex, only it is adjusted with more of elaborate neatness, and in that 

 becoming mode which betokens some pretensions to taste. They 

 also exhibit several distinctive peculiarities exclusively confined to 

 their own and the Fante community of nations, and not to be dis- 

 covered in the other kingdoms of intertropical Africa. Encircling 

 the waist, immediately above the hips, a cincture formed of two 

 strings of large cylindrical beads known by the name of Henna, is 

 permanently worn by all classes, commonly in conjunction with a 

 massive girdle of a smaller variety, partly coloured and of a globu- 

 lar figure {Poumjpony Mulatto females, the wives of caboceers and 



ifi b'3Jiidi*itJ« fti o'><[/JJ?.muo'jiy airii oT .rnobeo'i'i mii\ 



