HISTORY. 
229 
subjects : but, from the little I could collect, it appeared to have 
been an emigration of numerous enterprising or discontented 
families, to whom the parent state afterwards became subject. I 
am inclined to think, (the account of their coming from a country 
nearer the sea being too general for conjecture to revolt from,) that 
they emigrated from the eastward of south, where the territory 
admitted to be Ashantee proper is remote, compared with its 
extent southward, or westward of south, and the former con- 
sequence of Doompassie, and the towns eastward of it, support 
this : yet, the very few natives who pretended to any opinion on 
the subject, had an impression, that their ancestors emigrated from 
the neighbourhood of a small river, Ainshue, behind Winnebah : a 
croom called Coomadie is to be found there, but there is nothing 
else to countenance the report. 
The Ashantee, Fan tee, Warsaw, Akira, Assin, and Aquapim 
languages are indisputably dialects of the same root ; their identity 
is even more striking than that of the dialects of the ancient Greek: 
now the Fantees and Warsaws both cherish a tradition, which 
exists also in many Ahanta families, that they were pressed from 
the interior to the water side by the successful ambition of a 
remote power ; whence it may be concluded, that the Ashantee 
emigration we are now considering, was posterior to a more im- 
portant movement of the whole people, corresponding with that of 
their neighbours. I will not dilate upon this secondary subject 
by referring to internal evidence, there is nothing to recompense 
either the investigation or the perusal. 
One curious evidence however may be added of the former 
identity of the Ashantee, Warsaw, Fantee, Akim, Assin, Aquam- 
boe, and part of the Ahanta nations ; which is a tradition that the 
whole of these people were originally comprehended in twelve 
tribes or families ; the Aquonna, Abrootoo, Abbradi, Essonna, 
