438 
MISSION TO ASHANTEE, 
kind, the Governor awards heavy damages to the plaintiff. If an 
appUcant is refused, and is detected in intrigue, the whole of his 
property is forfeited to the husband of the woman, who, if it is 
not speedily deUvered, may J^ill the man, and burn his house. I 
heard of no law so barbarous or disgusting, as this any where in 
the interior of the Gold Coast. They assured me they never made 
human sacrifices. 
A man of consequence never drinks before his inferiors, without 
hiding his face from them, beheving that at this moment only, his 
enemies have the power of imposing a spell on his faculties, in 
spite of the guardiance of his fetish. When a man dies, the door 
of his house is kept shut seven days. The whiskers of the men, 
and the side locks both of them and the women, hang down in nar- 
row braids, sometimes below their shoulders, the ends commonly 
tipped with small beads, and the front locks are generally braided 
to project like horns. The women wear a number of thick brass 
rings (the trade brass rod twisted) round their legs. A woman of 
consequence has a succession of them from the ancle to the knee, 
which announce her approach when walking, and jingle when she 
dances. The female slaves support even the heaviest burdens from a 
broad band or string around the temples. Like other negroes, differ- 
ent famihes have different fetish, some will not eat a cock, nor others 
a hen. I could not discover any distinct ideas of the creation, or of 
a future life. They believe implicitly in the superior fetish of indi- 
viduals from Sappalah and other countries in the interior. 
. Tom Lawson's 'fetish man,' a native of Sappalah, has so tho- 
roughly persuaded his master, by his address and fortuitous cir- 
cumstances in war, that no bullet can injure him, strike him where 
it will, (either rebounding, or penetrating to be thrown from the 
stomach at pleasure) that this old man, who has Hved almost the 
whole of his life in European vessels, always presses every stranger 
