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MISSION TO ASHANTEE. 
bear it as obdurately as young Spartans. Sometimes one party 
trips up a person with a load of provisions, whilst another scrambles 
them up : the anxious alarm of the market people, sitting with 
sticks in their hands, and the comic archness of these boys thread- 
ing the crowd in all directions, is indescribable. Some of the 
earliest European travellers in Abyssinia met with a similar troop 
of royal plunderers, and I believe suffered from them ; our pro- 
perty was always respected by them, but they used to entertain 
themselves with mimicking our common expressions and our actions, 
which they did inimitably : whilst sketching, they buzzed about me 
like musquitoes. The Ashantees are without exception the most 
surprising mimics I have ever heard. I have known a captain, 
called Adoo Quamina, repeat a sentence after I had finished it, of 
at least a dozen words, which he knew nothing about, and had not 
heard before. The King has a sort of buffoon, whose movements 
were as irresistibly comic as those of Grimaldi. 
The King appeared to have nearly a hundred negroes of different 
colors, through the shades of red and pink to white; they were 
collected for state, but were generally disgusting objects, diseased 
and emaciated ; they always seemed as if going to shed their skins, 
and their eyes blinked in the light, as if it was not their element. 
About twenty pots of white soup, and twenty pots of black 
(made with palm nuts) are cooked daily at the palace, (besides 
those for the consumption of the household,) for visitors of conse- 
quence, and a periguin of gold is given daily to Yokokroko, the 
chamberlain, for palm wine. This would have appeared too large 
a sum, had I not witnessed the vast consumption and waste of it ; 
for the vigour of an xAshantee being estimated by the measure of 
the draught he can drink off ; nearly half is generally spilt over 
his beard, which it is his greatest pride and luxury to draw through 
his fingers when wet, The King was very proud of the superior 
