24 
MISSION TO ASHANTEE. 
a cachou tree, fixed the eye; whence it wandered over a ricli 
variety of tint and foliage, in which light and shade were most 
happily blended : the small rocks stole through the herbage of the 
banks, and now and then ruffled the water: the doom trees 
towering in the shrubbery, waved to the most gentle air a rich 
foliage of dark green, mocking the finest touch of the pencil; the 
tamarind and smaller mimosas heightening its effect by their 
livelier tint, and the more piquant delicacy of their leaf : the cotton 
trees overtopped the whole, enwreathed in convoivuli, and several 
elegant little trees, unknown to me, rose in the background, inter- 
mixed with palms, and made the coup d'oeil enchanting. The 
bright rays of the sun were sobered by the rich reflections of the 
water ; and there was a mild beauty in the landscape, uncongenial 
to barbarism, which imposed the expectation of elegance and 
refinement. I attempted a sketch, but it was far beyond my rude 
pencil ; the expression of the scene could only have been traced 
in the profile of every tree ; and it seemed to defy any touches, 
but those of a Claude or a Wilson, to depict the life of its beauty. 
I took two angles from a base on the south side, which gave the 
width of the river, forty three yards; the depth was 7 feet, and 
the course N.W.|^W. with a very strong current. A small river 
(balled Nime'a, ran into it, close to our right as we landed : we 
crossed in the hollow trunk of a tree, thirty feet long, the ends 
plastered up with sticks and swish. 
Mansue was said to have been the last town of the Fantee terri- 
tory ; but we had no opportunity for comparison until we passed 
the river, the country thitherto presenting all the gloom of depo- 
pulation, and the forest fast recovering the sites of tl)e large towns 
destroyed in the Ashantee invasions. The inhabitants of the few 
wretched hovels, remotely scattered, seemed as if they had fled to 
them as outcasts from society ; they were lost even to curiosity, and 
