chap, hi.] WEST INDIES. 273 
every Gold coast negro that I have interrogated on 
the subject, and I have inquired of many.* In a 
country where executions are so frequent, and hu¬ 
man blood is spilt with so little remorse, death 
must necessarily have lost many of its terrors; and 
the natives in general, conscious they have no se¬ 
curity even for the day that is passing over them, 
seem prepared for, and resigned to, the fate that 
probably awaits them . This contempt of death, or 
* The following particulars 1 collected from some of my own ICo- 
romantyn Negroes, whose veracity I h id no reason to doubt i—'dlara, 
a most faithful well disposed woman, who was brought from the Gold 
coast to Jamaica the latter end of 1784, relates, “ that she was born 
in a village near Anamaboo; that her father and mother, and their 
children, (nine in number), were slaves to a great m m named Anawoa> 
on whose death she herself, and two of her brothers, (who likew.se be¬ 
long to me), with several others of his slaves, were sold to pay his 
debts. That twenty others were killed at his funeral. I asked her 
which country she liked best, Jamaica or Guinea ? She replied, that 
Jamaica was the better country, £ for that people were not killed there , 
as in Guinea^ at the funeral of their masters.' She informed me also, 
in answer to some other inquiries, of a remarkable fact, (i. e.), that 
the natives of the Gold coast give their children the yaws (a fright¬ 
ful disorder) by inoculation 5 and she described the manner of per¬ 
forming the operation to be making an incision in the th'gh, and put¬ 
ting in some of the infectious matter. I asked her what benefit they 
expected from this practice ? She answered, that by this means their 
infants had the disorder slightly, and recovered speedily, whereas 
by catching it. at a later time of life, the disease, she said, ‘ got into 
the bone 5’ that was her expression. 
Cudjoe, aged (as I suppose) about fifty, relates, that he was born in 
the kingdom of Assiantee, the king or chieftain of which country was 
named Poco. Cudjoe’s elder brother having been caught m adultery 
with the wife of a man named Quashee, was adjudged to pay a fine to 
Vo). IT 
m m 
