MISSION TO ASHANTEE. 
103 
Coomassie, Aug. 29, 1817>- 
John Hope Smith, Esq. Governor in Chief, &c. &c. &c. 
Sir, 
I have tlie satisfaction to enclose a copy of the Preliminaries to 
the general Treaty, as signed this day by the King in Council, 
adjusting the Commenda palaver, agreeably to your letter of the 
11th, which did not reach me till the 27th instant. 
I proceed to acquaint you with the transactions of the interval. 
The charge of a political Embassy, in a part of the world where 
respect and security are founded upon the opinion imposed by our 
conduct, exacted a spirit and dignity, which might have been 
abated in insinuating a Mission through the country for scientific 
purposes, but the inviolability of which was inseparable from the 
improvement and safety of neighbouring settlements. Since my 
last dispatch, I have been obligated to resist various encroach- 
ments, of which I shall mention two or three to justify ray treatment 
of them. 
The death of Quamina Bwa, our Ashantee guide, in the early 
part of the last week, creating an idle, but popular superstition 
that he had been killed by the fetish for bringing white men to 
take the country ; I was applied to in the King's name, to ameli- 
orate this impression, by contributing an ounce of gold towards 
the custom to be made by the King for his repose. I refused on 
two grounds ; first, that Quamina Bwa had himself unjustly 
incensed the people against us, by panyaring* their provisions in 
the King's name, for our subsistence, and defrauding them of the 
gold we gave him for the payment : secondly, that the rites of 
customs were unnatural to our religion, which bound us, at least, 
not to encourage them. Fifteen persons had been sacrificed the 
* Seizing. " 
