338 
MISSION TO ASHANTEE. 
much finer position for head quarters than Cape Coast; the 
Dutch fort at Succondee, the best point for the Warsaw trade, and 
where we have but a house, is strong, admirably situated, and 
might be put in good condition for £1000. in addition to which, 
Axim, near the mouth of the Ancobra, would be the only fort to 
windward worth keeping ; and the Danish head quarters, Chris- 
tiansburg Castle at Accra, with their fort at Adda, (to secure the 
navigation of the Volta,) would have answered every purpose and 
view to leeward. One system could then have been acted upon 
towards the natives, the commerce, confined to the English, would 
have grown from wholesome regulations, which no other settlers 
could counteract by selfishness, jealousy, or by facilitating the 
illegitimate trade we would crush ; and the benevolent views of the 
British government for the improvement and civilization of the 
natives, would not be defeated by those, who, holding their private 
interest superior to views in which their own government has 
evinced no interest, militate against them by fostering suspicions 
to bar our progress in the interior, and by indulging those habits 
and customs of the natives, which it must be our first step to correct 
and divert. 
In addition to the obstacles which the inconsistent and selfish 
conduct of the different European powers towards the natives pre- 
sents to intercourse and civilization, the continuance of the slave 
trade under the Spanish flag, is one more serious : no one can 
isnagine the stubborn impediment it was to our negotiations at 
Ashantee, where the native emissaries from these slave ships arrived 
not long after us. It not only injures the British commerce here, 
almost to annihilation, but, slaving being the natural trade of the 
natives, because it is the most indolent and the most lucrative, the 
opposition, which is insinuated and believed to proceed from the 
English alone, conveys a disagreeable impression of us to the 
