38 
MISSION TO ASHANTEE. 
observed a Portuguese inscription on one piece, and they seemed 
generally of that manufacture. The executioner, a man of an 
immense size, wore a massy gold hatchet on his breast ; and the 
execution stool was held before him, clotted in blood, and partly 
covered with a cawl of fat. The king's four linguists were encir- 
cled by a splendor inferior to none, and their pecuhar insignia, 
gold canes, were elevated in all directions, tied in bundles like 
fasces. The keeper of the treasury, added to his own magnificence 
by the ostentatious display of his service ; the blow pan, boxes^ 
scales and weights, were of solid gold. 
A delay of some minutes whilst w^e severally approached to 
receive the king's hand, afforded us a thorough view of him; his 
deportment first excited my attention ; native dignity in princes we 
are pleased to call barbarous was a curious spectacle : his man- 
ners were majestic, yet courteous; and he did not allow his sur- 
prise to beguile him for a moment of the composure of the 
monarch ; he appeared to be about thirty-eight years of age, 
inclined to corpulence, and of a benevolent countenance ; he wore 
a fillet of aggry beads round his temples, a necklace of gold cock- 
spur shells strung by their largest ends, and over his right 
shoulder a red silk cord, suspending three saphies cased in gold ; 
his bracelets were the richest mixtures of beads and gold, and his 
fingers covered with rings ; his cloth was of a dark green silk ; a 
pointed diadem was elegantly painted in white on his forehead ; 
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 knee-bands were of aggry beads, 
and his ancle strings of gold ornaments of the most delicate work- 
manship, small drums, sankos, stools, swords, guns, and birds, 
clustered together ; his sandals, of a soft white leather, were em- 
bossed across the instep band with small gold and silver cases of 
