YAMS AND CHRISTMAS FESTIVALS 149 
offering, and any stray person at the palace door might 
be suddenly attacked, slaughtered, and divided between 
the " brafos" and " adumfos." One took a finger, another 
an arm or foot, and whoever obtained the head, danced in 
crazy ecstacy, painted its forehead red and white, kissed it 
on the mouth, laughing or with mocking words of pity, 
and finally hung it round his neck, or seized it with his 
teeth. Another took out the heart and roasted it, carried 
it in one hand, and a loaf of maize bread in the other, 
and walked about as if he were eating his break- 
fast. 
The king (in common with his people) had disfigured 
his face with red stripes, and wore a black helmet, on 
which were engraved many gold crowns. The pomp and 
display on this occasion, gave me a deeper impression of 
the riches of Ashantee, than I had ever before received. 
In the evening, they brought the skulls of their most 
important enemies from the mausoleum at Bantama, and 
placed them in the stillness of night in front of the Fetish, 
solemnly enquiring after the state of their spirits. 
Amongst them was the skull of Sir Charles Macarthy, who 
was killed in the battle of Esamako in 1824, and since 
kept in a brass basin, covered with a white cloth. We 
did not see this, but we met some forty men, each bearing 
a skull in his hand, round the forehead of which, a red 
rag was thrown, leaping, cursing and jumping, in the 
wildest confusion. The whole affair was the more dis- 
tressing to us, as it happened on a Sunday, and we thought 
of the change which might come over this land; if Christ- 
endom took the misery of such people more to heart. 
On the last great day of the festival (December 22nd) the 
king, before eating the new yams, washed himself in 
fetish water, brought in bottles from distant springs, 
sacred to the fetish. It was poured into basins in which 
the chiefs performed frequent ablutions during the day, 
