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MISSION TO ASHANTEE. 
In Ashantee there is not a common fetish day, as on the coast.* 
Different families solemnize different days of the week, by wearing 
white cloths, abstaining from palm wine and labour, as they do 
the day of the week on which they were born, which is in fact their 
second fetish day. The King's family keep Tuesday as their fetish 
day. Odumata's, Friday. Saturday was the King's birth day, 
when, as well as on his fetish day, he always sat on a stool placed 
before his chair as a foot stool would be. Some famihes never eat 
beef, others abstain from pork. Fowls and beef are the fetish of 
the King's family, and consequently never eaten by it. 
The Ashantees have their Fasti and Nefasti, or lucky and un- 
lucky days, as the Romans had.f The former consecrated by 
some good fortune, the latter condemned from some national 
calamity, as Saturday, for instance, from the defeat and death of 
Sai Tootoo. They are also otherwise marked than by the week ; 
for I was told, that our month of September contained fewer bad 
days than any other, and was besides deemed auspicious to 
travelling : 
Ipsa dies alios alio dedit ordine Luna 
Felices operum - - - - 
- - - - nona fugse melior. Geor. i. 
I have known Ashantees thirtj^ days coming with dispatches from 
Cape Coast Castle to Coomassie, in August ; and in September, to 
have arrived in twelve. 
If the successor to a stool, or any rich inheritance is a child, 
they grind aggry beads into a pov/der, and rub him with it daily, 
palaces, or of Sabi (probably Assaboo) on the Slave Coast ; the alligator of Dix Cove 
may possibly be alluded to. 
* Tuesday is the common fetish day on the coast, when they neither fish or work in 
their plantations. 
•j- Ille et nefasto te posuit die. Hor. 12, 13. 
Romani pariter quosdam atros et nefastos habuere, eo quod in iis clades acceperant ; - - - 
