350 
MISSION TO ASHANTEE. 
as well as the commoner purposes of speech, is a strong proof that 
language was revealed, as Johnson, Blair, Warburton, and others 
have maintained, and that it was not the fruit of human inven- 
tion or industry, as Lucretius, Horace, and most of the antients 
imagined. 
Neither the Accra or Fantee distinguish genders, the name of 
the person, or the context, is the only explication; they have not 
even a third person feminine, but one pronoun serves for he^ 
she, it. 
The A ccra has a definite and indefinite article, but both are 
afifixed to the noun, as " minna nooleh," I saw the man ; " minna 
nookoo," I saw a man. The indefinite article " koo " is the con- 
traction of numeral one, " ekoo," so that I saw a man, is literally 
" I saw man one.'" An is simply another form of the numeral 
one, still used in North Britain under the form ane ; and in the 
French, the numeral and the article corresponding to one, are the 
same. The Fantee, like the Greek, has no indefinite article, or 
according to Mr. Harris's expression, on which Mr. Horne Tooke 
is so pleasant, " supplies it by a negation of the definite,"' which 
is " woo,"' afifixed, as " mehoon nimpanoo," I saw the man.* 
* The word cahoceer (chiefs) which I have used in the correspondence, history, and 
other parts of this work, as the only title familiar to Europeans, (being always substi- 
tuted, even by native interpreters for the vernacular,) was of course introduced by the 
Portuguese, and consequently unknown in the interior. It is applied to a chief who has 
the charge or government of a town, (croom.) Such however are indiscriminately called 
ohen or Mng; in Fantee. Throughout Ashantee the monarch only is called ohennie or 
Mng, and the chiefs who have the care or government of the towns of his dominions, 
sqfehen. Safie or saphzvooa^ means hey, and the last syllable of the compound, hen, is 
evidently an abbreviation of ohennie. Safie, a charm, is without doubt identical in a 
figurative sense with sqfee, hey ; and should, on consideration, be spelt as such, and not 
mphie a^ l have generally written it hitherto. A Moor is called Crambo by the Negroes 
of the interior, which bears the same interpretation as Pongheme, a Spaniard, in the 
Tamanack, i. e. a man clothed, 
