MR. HUTCHISON'S DIARY. 
397 
exclaiming " Allahoo Akabir \" God is great. I gave the caboceer 
a wax candle, piece of a perfumed soap (which he was going to 
eat !) a flask of Jamaica rum, and some sugar ; things he had never 
seen before : he begged to be allowed to touch my hand, and con- 
tinued calling out Ah ! bielane Wasieh ! Ah Nasara! Ah white visier ! 
Ah Christian. He said he had a sister whom he would make me a 
present of, if I would have her. The caboceer of Alphia is brother 
to the caboceer of Premehinie, east of Ashantee, in the Sarem 
region, and subject to Sai Tootoo ; it is 14 days journey to Alphia, 
one day to Brookoom, where the head fetish of that country 
dwells, and one day more to Crumassia and Sodie, a range of high 
hills. 
1 told him I would buy his horse if he would put a reasonable 
price on it, and would give him a note to get powder, rum, &c, at the 
Cape : he said the Ashantees brought rum to Sarem, but they boiled 
pepper in water and sold it to them ; he never tasted such good 
adrue (medicine) as mine. 
I have been learning Arabic this last month, principally from 
the Shereef Abraham, who comes from Boussa, where Mungo Park 
was drowned, and he, as he says, was an eye witness to it; his 
great sanctity made the King of Ashantee send for him to pray 
and make sacrifice for the success of the war. The other Moors 
here look on him with an evil eye, because he will not wear fetishes 
as they do, and be present at human sacrifice. This place now 
presents the singular spectacle of a Christian and Mahometan 
agreeing in two particulars, rejecting fetishes, and absenting them- 
selves from human sacrifices and other abominations : the rest of 
the people, of whatever country they may be, when the King's 
horns announce any thing of the kind, strive who will get there 
first to enjoy the agonies of the victims. The Shereef told me to- 
day, that the reason he came so seldom to see me, wasj that the 
