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MISSION TO ASHANTEE. 
and Anastrophe, in their poetry, and in their poetry only, (making 
it uninteUigible even to those who can converse fluently with them) 
that both languages may be said to have a Prosody. From the 
following song, I imagined the Fantees (for the Accra's are said 
to possess none but fetish hymns in their own language) to have 
some idea of rhyme, considering the inversion of the first line as 
forced, and expressly accommodated to the metre, 
Abirrikirri croom ogah odum, 
Ocoontinkii bonoo fum, 
Cooroompun, 
Coom agwun, 
but I have not met with any other instance. 
TheAshantees generally use much and vehement gesture, and 
speak in recitative: their action is exuberant, but graceful ; and 
from the infancy of the language,* nouns and verbs are constantly 
with words; and therefore it may be depended upon as certain, that he would fall most 
readily into this arrangement. _ , _ , _ 
We might therefore conclude, a priori, that this would be the order in which things 
were most commonly arranged at the beginning of language, and accordingly we find, 
in fact, that in this order words are arranged in most of the antient tongues ; as in the 
Greek and the Latin ; and it is also said, in the Russian, the Sclavonic, the Gaelic, 
and several of the American tongues." Blair. 
The arrangement of words in the Chayma is such as is found in every language of 
both continents, which has preserved a certain air of youth. The object is placed before 
the verb, the verb before the personal pronoun. The object on which the attention 
should be principally fixed, precedes all the modifications of that object. 
The American would say ; " liberty complete love we ;" instead of we love complete 
liberty ; " Thee with happy am I" — instead of I am happy with thee. Humboldt's Per- 
sonal Narrative, vol, 3, p. 261. 
* " In the infancy of language, while words were yet scanty, the most natural way, 
whereby a writer or speaker might give an additional force to his discourse, was to repeat 
such terms as he wished to render emphatic. The more ancient any language is, the 
more numerous appear the traces of such repetitions ; and next to the Hebrew, they 
