JUDGMENT APPROACHES. 
259 
songs of praise) was a season of awful festivity in Coo- 
massie, for innocent blood was flowing in almost every 
street. The distressing cries of the poor widows and other 
relatives, with bodies painted red and long branches waving 
in their hands, were ascending continually. In all the 
principal streets the doomed sacrifices stood beside the 
corpses of the slain, awaiting the merciful stroke which 
would end their torture. One poor man was led to his 
wife's dead body, and tauntingly told to " look at her who 
had gone before to prepare his supper." We could count 
nearly sixty victims, chiefly Ashantees and Krepes, slaves 
and servants of the dead, and many more followed them 
during that night. 
On the next day, being Friday, no corpse was allowed 
to remain exposed in Coomassie, but I saw on my way to 
the building, three bodies which had not been removed. 
Alas ! one gradually became almost accustomed to such 
heart-rending scenes, and to cease even to shudder. Be- 
tween Coomassie and Amanghyia, six corpses which 
Kiihne had seen lying in the road, were so mutilated and 
destroyed by the vultures as to be perfectly indescribable. 
* Amongst the Fantees who had been swept away were a girl and 
boy whom the kiug sent to a Mohammedan in Duro, when our Fantees 
had intercourse with them from time to time. The boy described how 
the Europeans were building a broad street on the Prah, and how Mr. 
Blankson had been caught buying powder (which he had sent to the 
Ashantees in bottles), and had been attacked by the mob, but was saved 
by the governor and sent to Sierra Leone. Twenty or thirty Ashantees 
were daily taken to Cape Coast, so that the number of prisoners had be- 
come a burden, and they were being sent away in ships. 
The English report of the war is as follows : — 
On the 11th and 14th of April, 1873, the troops of tbe protectorate 
fought two sharp battles with the Ashantees between Dunkwa and 
Nyan Coomassie ; on the 15th the Fantees retreated. Their chiefs en- 
deavoured to excuse this step by accusing a member of the council, Mr. 
G. Blankson, of treachery. They would have killed him if Mr. Rows 
had not arrested him in order to save his life ; for in the same proportion 
as the Fantees were cowardly in the battle-field, was their enmity bitter 
