154 
MISSION TO ASHANTEE. 
siitprised to see him with a companion and a torch; he took me 
on his backhand in about three quarters of an hour we reached 
Akrofroom. This man knew I carried about me several ounces of 
gold, for the subsistence of the people, not trusting to our luggage, 
which we could not reckon on in such a season and journey. 
Exhausted and insensible, my life was in his hands, and infested 
as the forest was with wild beasts, he might after such a night, 
without suspicion, have reported me as destroyed by them ; this 
had occurred to me, and was an uneasy feeling as long as my 
torpor left me any. It was about two o'clock in the morning, and 
the inhabitants of Akrofroom were almost all asleep, for it was too 
rude a night for Negro revelry ; however, I was directly carried to 
a dry and clean apartment, furnished with a brass pan full of water 
to wash in, some fruits and palm wine, an excellent bed of mats 
and cushions, and an abundance of country cloths to wrap around 
ine, for I was all but naked. After I had washed, I rolled myself 
up in the cloths, one after the other, until I became a gigantic 
size, and by a profuse perspiration escaped any other ill than a 
sMght fever. A soldier came up about mid- day, and gave me 
some hopes of seeing Mr. Tedhe again, who arrived soon after- 
wards, having left his companions in a bog, waiting until he sent 
them assistance from the town. Our gratification was mutual, for 
the only trace he had had of me was by no means an encouraging 
one ; my servant meeting an Ashantee in the forest with fragments of 
my clothes, which he persisted he had not taken from any person, 
but picked up on his way. Mr. Tedlie (whose feet were cut and 
bruised much more than mine, and whose wretched plight mad^ 
him envy the African toga I had assumed) after we had separated, 
and the storm had drowned our mutual hollaings, the howlings of 
the wild beasts meeting his ears on all sides, had just determined 
to roost in a tree for the night, when an Ashantee appeared with a 
