28 
MISSION TO ASHANTEE. 
some palm wine and fruit : his manners were very pleasing, and 
made it more painful to us to hear that his life was forfeited to 
some superstitious observances, and that he only waited the result 
of a petition to the king to commiserate his infirmities so far as to 
allow him to be executed at his own croom, and to be spared the 
fatigue of a journey to the capital : he conversed cheerfully with 
us, congratulated himself on seeing white men before he died, and 
spread his cloth over the log with an emotion of dignity rather 
than shame : his head arrived at Coomassie the day after we had. 
On ascending the hill, the soil became a dark brown clay, and 
very productive. We passed the first large plantation of corn we 
had seen since we left Payntree, and halted at Doompassee. Dis- 
tance 6 miles. Courses N. N. N.W. N. W. Latitude by 
observation, 6° 11' 30''. 
Doompassee had been a very large croom, but the caboceer 
having intrigued with one of Sai Cudjoe's wives, who had per- 
mission to visit her family in this place, the greater part of it was 
destroyed in consequence, and the caboceer decapitated : the 
woman possessing irresistible art in practising upon the numerous 
admirers of her beauty, the king spared her life, and employed her 
thenceforth to inveigle those distant caboceers, , whose lives or 
properties were desirable to him. It was the most industrious 
town on the path ; cloths, beads, and pottery were manufacturing 
in all directions, and the blacksmiths' forges were always at work. 
The intelhgence of the beginning of the King's fetish week, and 
Mr. James's attack of fever, delayed us at Doompassee, and a 
messenger was dispatched in the interim to announce our approach. 
During our stay, I observed an echpse of Jupiter's first sateHite, 
which gave the longitude 2° 6' W. 
We did not leave Doompassee until the 14th of May ; after two 
miles, passing a small stream running N.W. we ascended a high 
