14 THE GOLD COAST, ASHANTI, AND KUMASSI 



of the palace, both interior and exterior, are crudely worked in 

 clay in faint bas-relief, and consist of grotesque figures of men 

 and women, hybrids, with bodies of sheep, goats, elejdiantsj 

 snakes, deer, and leopards combined with heads and tails of 

 monkeys, lizards, and alligators. On one hut I noticed the figure 

 of a man holding in one hand a human head, evidently his own, 

 as that member was missing from its proper place. 



West of the main street and near its southern extremity' is the 

 Sacred Grove, so grapliically described by Stanley and others, 

 as it existed prior to 1874. Several hundred lofty cottonwood 

 trees, scattered over a rectangular space four acres in area, thou- 

 sands of bodies in all stages of de- 

 com))osition and grinning skulls 

 gleaming white from their resting- 

 place, scores of vultures hovering 

 above or perched on the limbs 

 of the trees waiting for the next 

 human sacrifice — such was the 

 Sacred Grove at the beginning of 

 1896. Dynamite, however, had 

 materially altered its appearance 

 before I left Kumassi. The Great 

 Executioner, an officer of high 

 rank closely attached to the king's 

 household, presided here in his 

 gruesome work. While in recent years the practice of making 

 human sacrifices in Kumassi has been greatly checked by Euro- 

 pean influences, the present executioner is chargeable with the 

 taking of many thousands of human lives — a number variously 

 estimated at from twenty to fifty thousand — during the thirt}'- 

 years of his tenure of office. Some time after the main body of 

 the British expedition under Sir Francis Scott had returned to 

 the coast the executioner was captured and held as a i3risoner 

 in Kumassi, the British authorities believing that he knew where 

 the golden stool, the emblem of the king's office, was hidden. 

 While he was thus detained I photograplied him on several 

 occasions, and the picture reproduced in this article is from the 

 best of these. 



On the return journey to the coast I diverged from the main 

 route in order to visit the King of Beckwai. I found him living 

 in pomp and splendor at the town of Beckwai, the population 

 of which is about half that of Kumassi. It has no characteristics 



