42 
MISSIONARY LIFE IN ASIIANTEE. 
him ; truly did we pray that this cup of cold water might 
not lose its reward. We were now less strictly watched, 
and allowed to walk up and down the yard unattended by 
a slave. Still it happened one morning that — breakfast 
being late and hunger pressing — my wife took two bananas 
which no one in a plantation village would have noticed ; 
but Ageana saw it, and springing from his chair abused 
her till she wept. Her tears increased his indignation, 
and with violent curses he repeated the threat of cutting 
off her head. When I said. We shall have a word about 
this in Coomassie, his son screamed with rage, and extended 
the threat to us all. Again, when we begged our soup 
without pepper, which caused Mr. K. much suffering, it 
was ordered to be made so hot that, spite of our hunger, 
we could not touch it. The rage of the old man was then 
extreme, and the water in which some fruit had been 
boiled was given us in its place. 
While we stayed here the natives often called me 
"Seese." This we discovered to be a variation on the 
name of our missionary brother, Siiss, which, strange to 
say, seemed familiar to all the Ashantee people. They 
had probably made his acquaintance at Gyadam, and he 
appeared universally beloved and respected, so that I was 
honoured in being taken for his brother. Mr Kiihne's 
name they could not pronounce, so he was usually called 
" The long one," or " the white one," to distinguish him 
from me. 
One night we woke under the dreadful sensation caused 
by the bite of hundreds of ants, with which we were 
covered. Helpless in the darkness, and with our feet 
chained, we could only crawl away and find refuge among 
the cooking utensils, where we remained until the 
morning. But a still worse trouble was the loss of our 
rug, which had remained behind ; thus we had no pro- 
tection from the cold ground, and palm wine being here 
