CUSTOMS. 
303 
with in all parts of the town. Prostitutes are numerous and 
countenanced. No Ashantee forces his daughter to become the 
wife of the man he wishes, but he instantly disclaims her support 
and protection on her refusal, and would persecute the mother if 
she afforded it ; thus abandoned, they have no resource but prosti- 
tution. Daring the menses, the women of the capital retire to the 
plantations or crooms in the bush.* 
In visiting, the chief always gives his principal slaves a few sips 
of the liquor offered to him, not for security, for it is more fre- 
quently after than before he has drank, but as a mark of his favour. 
He will frequently give his daughter in marriage to a confidential 
slave, but where there are a few thus distinguished and indulged, 
(apparently as a political check upon a heterogeneous populace,) 
there are thousands barely existing. 
Their principal games are Worra-f- (see drawing, ISTo. 10.) which 
I could not understand, and Drafts, which both Moors and 
Negroes play well and constantly. Their method resembles the 
Polish, they take and move backwards and forwards, and a king 
has the bishop's move in chess. They have another game, for which 
a board is perforated like a cribbage board, but in numerous 
oblique lines, traversing each other in all directions, and each com- 
posed of three holes for pegs; the players begin at the same 
instant, with an equal number of pegs, and he who inserts or 
completes a line first, in spite of the baulks of his adversary, takes 
a peg from him, until the stock of either is exhausted. 
* The women of Ahanta, on the same occasion, are prohibited from entering any inha- 
bited place; and if they attempt to go into a house, are heavily fined or punished. If 
the family is respectable, they generally erect a temporary shed to shelter her ; the poorer 
iclass are forced to endure the inclemencies of the weather without any retreat. 
•f- This game is said to be played in Syria also. 
