104 MISSION TO ASHANTEE. 
week before (in a custom for the mother of a captain) with aggra- 
vated barbarity. 
Several of the principal men having applied to me to send to 
Cape Coast for silks, to be paid for on receipt at Coomassie (a 
very dangerous and impolitic indulgence), I impressed, indignantly, 
that I was not sent as a trader to make bargains with them, but as 
an officer to talk the palavers with the King. 
These circumstances, and a personal chastisement of some 
insults from inferior captains, which was provoked after much 
patience, influenced ex parte representations, which, though they 
may not have sickened the King's regard, induced hauteur and 
neglect. In proceeding to the King's house on public occasions, 
which I never did without the flag, canes, and soldiers, we had 
been expected to make way for the greater retinues of superior 
captains, who would rudely have enforced it ; and after soliciting 
audiences for two days, I was kept in waiting above an hour in 
the outer courts of the palace. On the last occasion of the latter 
treatment, knowing that it was affected, I returned to our quarters 
until I received the King's ^ invitation ; representing to him, that 
as an oflicer dignified by an authority to make a treaty with him 
in the name of the British Government, I could not submit to 
disrespectful treatment at the Palace, nor allow the Enghsh flag to 
give place to any but himself ; that, if it merely affected myself as 
an individual, my esteem for the King would induce me to com- 
promise these points of etiquette with his captains ; but, according 
to the custom of England, I dared not ; for if I did, my sword 
would be taken from me on my return to Cape Coast Castle. It 
produced the desired effect ; the gong gong proclaimed in every 
street that all captains must make way for the flag ; and at the 
monthly levee of the captains (the Adai custom) the King's Hn- 
guists were deputed to us first, with the customary present of a 
