18 
ASIIANTEES. 
Manners and Customs of the Ashantees. 
Ashantee is a large and powerful negro state in Africa. The 
most authentic account which we have received respecting these peo- 
ple, is to be derived from the work of Mr. E. Bowdich, who was 
conductor of a mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee ; which 
was published in 1819. This gentleman, in describing the object 
and departure of his mission, states that Bosman and Barbot men- 
tion the Ashantees as first heard of by Europeans about the year 
1706. Issert, a physician in the Danish service, who meditated a 
visit to Ashantee, writes—** This mighty king has a piece of gold as 
a charm, more than four men can carry; and innumerable slaves are 
constantly at work for him in the mountains, each of whom must 
collect or produce two ounces of gold per diem. In 1807 an 
Ashantee army reached the coast for the first time. In 1811 the 
Ashantees invaded Fantee, and again in 1816. These invasions 
inflicted the greatest miseries on the Fantees. Few were slain in 
battle, for they rarely dared to encounter the invaders ; but the 
butcherings in cold blood were incredible, and thousands were drag- 
ged into the interior, to be sacrificed to the superstitions of the con- 
querors. The prolonged blockade of Cape Coast Castle in the last 
invasion, engendered so much distress and hazard, that the govern- 
ment having averted imminent danger by advancing a large sum of 
gold on account of the Fantees, earnestly desired the Committee 
to authorize and enable them to venture an embassy to deprecate 
these repeated calamities, to conciliate so powerful a monarch, and 
to propitiate an extension of commerce. In consequence of this 
application, in 1817 the African Committee forwarded liberal and 
suitable presents, and a mission was sent to Aspenlow, with proper 
instructions as to the observations they were to make. Under these 
instructions, the mission departed, accompanied by Mr. Bowdich ; the 
result of whose observations has, as we have already stated, been 
published. 
After describing the difficulties of his progress, and the country 
through which he passed, Mr. Bowdich proceeds as follows : — ** We 
entered Cooraassie at two o’clock, passing under a sacrifice of dead 
sheep, wrapped up in red silk, and suspended between two lofty poles. 
Upwards of five thousand people, the greater part warriors, met us, 
with awful bursts of martial music, discordant only in its mixture ; 
for horns, drums, rattles, and gongs, were all exerted with a zeal 
bordering on frenzy, to subdue us by first impressions. The smoke 
which encircled us, from the incessant discharges of musketry, con- 
fined our glimpses to the fore-ground, and we were halted, whilst the 
captains performed their pyrrhic dance in the centre of the circle 
formed by the warriors, where a confusion of flags, English, Dutch, 
and Danish, were waved and flourished in all directions, the bearers 
plunging and springing from side to side with a passion of enthu- 
siasm only equalled by the captains, who followed them, discharging 
their blunderbusses so close, that the flags were now and then in a 
blaze. The dress of the captains was a war cap, with gilded rams’ 
