310 
MISSION TO ASHANTEE. 
the drawing, No. 3, and a small loom complete is amongst the 
articles for the British Museum. They use a spindle, and not a 
distaff, for spinning, holding it in one hand, and twisting the 
thread, (which has a weight at the end,) with the finger and thumb 
of the other. The fineness, variety, brilHance, and size of their 
cloths would astonish, could a more costly one be exhibited ; in 
the absence of which, that for the Museum will doubtless be 
admired for the two first qualities, and for having precisely the 
same appearance on both sides. I shall notice in the Chapter on 
Trade, that the richest silks are unravelled to weave into them. 
The white cloths, which are principally manufactured in Inta and 
Dagwumba, they paint for mourning with a mixture of blood and 
a red dye wood. The patterns are various, and not inelegant, and 
painted with so much regularity, with a fowl's feather, that they 
have all the appearance of a coarse print at a distance. I have 
seen a man paint as fast as I could write. There will be a very 
fair specimen in the British Museum, the price of painting which 
was one ackie. 
They have two dye woods, a red and a yellow, specimens of 
which I brought down; they make a green by mixing the latter 
with their blue dye, in which they excel ; it is made from a plant 
called acassie, certainly not the indigo, which grows plentifully on 
the Coast. The acassie rises to the height of about two feet, and 
according to the natives, bears a red flower, but the leaf is not 
small, fleshy, or soft, nor is it pale or silvery coloured underneath ; 
it is a thin acuminate leaf about five inches long, and three broad, 
of a dark green.* I regret to add, our best specimens of this plant 
perished in the disasters of our march, and no drawing was made 
* It is a shrub with opposite leaves, no stipules, and having a certain degree of rer 
semblance to Marsdenia suave-olens (the indigo of Sumatra) but as the leaves are 
toothed in the acassie, it probably does not belong even to the same natural order. 
