CONSTITUTION AND LAWS. 
259 
If a person brings a frivolous palaver against another, he must 
give an entertainment to the family and friends of the acquitted. 
If an aggry bead is broken in a scuffle, seven slaves are to be 
paid to the owner. 
Trifling thefts are generally punished by the exposure of the 
party in various parts of the town, whilst the act is published ; but 
more serious thefts cannot be visited on the guilty by any but his 
family, who are bound to compensate the accuser, and punish 
their relative or not as they think fit; they may even put him or 
her to death, if the injury is serious, or the crime repeated or 
habitual. 
If a man cohabits with a woman without the house, or in the 
bush, they are both the slaves of the first person who discovers 
them ; but redeemable by their families. 
It is forbidden, as it was by Lycurgus, to praise the beauty of 
another man's wife, being intrigue by implication. 
A captain generally gives a periguin to the family on taking a 
wife, a poor man two ackies : the damages for intrigue in the 
former case are ten periguins ; in the latter, one ackie and a half, 
and a pot of palm wine. 
himself to the fetish on the head of another, the other must redeem him. If a man kills 
himself on the head of another, the other must kill himself also, or pay 20 oz, to the 
family : in Fantee the sum is indefinitely great : this is frequently resorted to, when there 
is no other prospect of revenge. 
Adumissa, an extraordinarily beautiful red skinned woman of Cape Coast, possessed 
numerous admirers, but rejected them all. One of them, in despair, shot himself on her 
head close to her house. The family demanding satisfaction; to save her relations from 
a ruinous palaver, she resolved to shoot herself in expiation. She accordingly assembled 
her friends and relatives from various parts of the country, and sitting, richly dressed, 
killed herself in their presence with golden bullets. After the body had been exposed in 
state, it was buried with a profusion of cloths and gold. The beautiful Adumissa is still 
eulogised, and her favourite patterned cloth bears her name amongst the natives. 
