TRADE. 
337 
out the trouble of fetching it; and these articles, with the value, 
their prevention of all intercourse but their own with the .water 
side nations, attached to a little rum and iron in the interior, fur- 
nished them with silks and cotton cloths at a much easier rate, 
pattern and quality. 
A serious disadvantage opposed to the English trade, is that the 
Ashantees will purchase no tobacco but the Portuguese, and that 
eagerly even at 2 oz. of gold the roll. Of this, (the Portuguese and 
Spanish slave ships regularly calling at Elmina,) the Dutch Gover- 
nor-General is enabled to obtain frequent supplies, in exchange for 
canoes, two of which, though they cost him comparatively nothing, 
fetch 32 rolls of tobacco ; and the General has sometimes received 
80 oz. of gold a day from the Ashantees for tobacco only. If they 
cannot have this tobacco, they will content themselves with that 
grown in the interior, of which I have brought a sample. A pre- 
ference for the Dutch has long been natural to the Ashantees, 
from an earlier though limited intercourse with them, and from the 
natural impression, that the Enghsh settling amongst their enemies, 
the Fantees, have encouraged and assisted their provocations and 
resistance. With this bias in his favor, though the Dutch market, 
destitute of supplies, had not been visited for many years, the 
talent of General Daendels, " callidum quicquid placuit,^' would 
no doubt have again raised it to a level with the English, caeteris 
paribus ; and his unlimited importation of powder and guns in the 
first place, with the still more valuable supplies of Portuguese 
tobacco he receives at present, as superior advantages, have, of 
course, possessed the Dutch market of superior inducements. 
It is to be lamented, the indifference of the Dutch and Danes 
to their settlements here, being evident from their neglect and re- 
duction of them, that the British government did not take advan- 
tage of the disregard, and add them to their own. Elmina is a 
XX 
