The Land of Fetish

by A. B. Ellis

“A pretty simile that of the Governor’s about the mud-fish, wasn’t it?”

“Yes; but its meaning doesn’t seem very clear.”

“Doesn’t seem very clear? Why, my dear fellow, it is patent to the meanest intellect. The mud-fish is a worthless kind of fish that nobody would take the trouble to catch: the Governor used the comparison to mean that he was somebody of importance.”

I have not made up my mind which of these interpretations to adopt; the reader can take any one he likes, but it seems to me that there is a good deal of haze about the subject.

The Ashantis, like the Adansis who had arrived on the 14th, were accommodated with exceedingly airy sheds in the camp, and this accession to our numbers brought up the sum-total of occupants to something over a thousand. The envoys had brought with them two or three small, but apparently heavy, boxes, and these were supposed to contain gold dust, which the king had sent as an earnest of his desire for peace. Prince Buaki was a fine-looking man over six feet in height; I had known beforehand that he must be a handsome man, since the ladies of the blood-royal in Ashanti are only allowed to form connections with strikingly presentable men, so that, as the female branches take precedence of the male in furnishing heirs to the throne, the comeliness of their kings may be, as far as possible, assured; but I was not prepared to see such an unusually good specimen of the negro race. I was much struck too with the wonderful difference between the physiognomies of the chiefs and those of their followers and slaves, a difference which is barely perceptible among the tribes who have long been subject to us, such as the Fanti; but which, among the independent inland races, the most careless observer cannot help noticing. The chiefs have almost invariably a look of intelligence, and are generally of a fine physique; but the retainers and slaves possess features and characteristics of a very low type indeed. This of course is chiefly due to the principle of selection, as, for generations past, the chiefs, who are able to pick and choose, have selected the best-looking women for their wives, while the vulgar herd have had to take what they can get. On the sea-board this has been done also, but there the formation of an intermediate trading-class of natives, between the chiefs and the lower orders, has blended by imperceptible gradations the distinguishing characteristics of the two extremes. It is worthy of notice that the women whom the chiefs choose are those who, according to European ideas, possess the largest share of good looks; which goes far to prove that we have a common ideal of beauty, and that, in spite of the popular belief, negroes do not regard mountainous cheek bones, flattened noses, uptilted nostrils, and blubber lips, as the true types of loveliness.

The following Ashantis of note were in the suite of Prince Buaki. Yow Badoo, personal attendant of the king, Yeboa, representative of the royal family of Ashanti, two sons of the late King Quaco Duah, and the brother and son of Prince Buaki. The chiefs of Becquai, Mampon, Kokofuah, and Insuta, each sent a representative, as did Awooah, chief of Bantama, the Ashanti general; the remainder of the embassy consisted of the usual personal attendants, with a sword-bearer and four courtiers. The districts of Archwa, Assomyah, Denyasi, Inquantansi, and Inquaransah, were unrepresented: the last-named is one of the most important in the Ashanti kingdom, and, next to Kokofuah, furnishes the largest contingent for the army. A representative from the Amoaful district arrived in the camp next day.

As the kingdom of Ashanti is divided into ten large districts, it is clear that the embassy represented only half the nation, which in fact was to be expected, and as at least three of the districts represented, namely, Becquai, Bantama, and Amoaful, had originally been amongst the foremost of those forming the war-party, and had only been persuaded to remain passive through the king’s personal influence, the prevailing state of feeling in Ashanti could be very fairly guaged. Indeed, looking at the vast preponderance of the “war” over the “court” party it is a matter for surprise that Mensah should have been able to bring the difficulty to an amicable settlement, and this difficulty was by no means lessened by the fact that Prince Buaki himself was strongly in favour of hostilities. That the king’s task was further made more onerous by the extraordinary action of the Colonial Government I have already shown.

The day after the meeting between Sir Samuel Rowe and the Ashanti envoys it was made known that in a few days the camp would be broken up, and that all its occupants,—officers, labourers, carriers, police, Adansis, and Ashantis,—would proceed to Elmina, where a final palaver was to be held to settle the Ashanti question. As the Governor now said that he had all along intended settling the matter on the sea-board, either at Acra, Cape Coast, or Elmina, his bush expedition only seemed the more extraordinary; as, apart from the political evil consequences that resulted from it, and the great expense to which the Colony had been put to no purpose, by being compelled to provide for an army of labourers and hammock-men, and to defray the extra cost of bush-life, he had, as it seemed, without any reasonable cause, imperilled the healths, if not the lives, of a number of European officers, by encamping them, without proper shelter or comforts, on the banks of the miasmatic Prah.

Fortunately the rains had not set in as early as usual, but Prahsu was quite sufficiently unhealthy for all ordinary purposes: after dark, a cold, wet, white mist shrouded every object, and to venture outside one’s tent at night was to become saturated with moisture and chilled to the bone. Had the rains set in the consequences would have been most disastrous, as, if the river had overflown its banks ever so slightly, the camp would have been inundated, while the wretched habitations that had been provided would not have kept out a smart shower, much less a heavy tropical downpour. Sometimes the mist was so dense that, standing on one bank, one could not see across the river, and the muddy flood rolled on under its mantle of vapour, as under a shroud through the rifts of which the moonbeams faintly struggled in a deathly silence, broken only now and then by the weird cries of the tree-sloth, which, to a fanciful mind, might sound like the wailing of a spirit of one of the many scores of Europeans whose lives have been sacrificed to the spectral stream. The approach to the camp, on the side where the main road came in, was in an indescribable condition of filth, which might easily have been prevented had proper precautions been only taken at first; and on the other sides, where the forest had been cleared, the rank vegetation had been allowed to lie where it fell, putrefying and poisoning the air.

Had there been much mortality at Prahsu a storm of indignation would have burst out in England at a camp having again been established there in spite of the warnings of history; but, because no deaths occurred actually on the spot, the breaking of the West African golden rule was not the less-advised; this rule forbids, except in cases of urgent necessity, the removal of Europeans from the health-giving sea-breezes and from such poor comforts as the wretched Colony affords.