When this movement is adroitly performed, the water and lighter sand escape from the bowl, while the gold dust sinks by its own weight to the bottom, and is thus separated, and put in the quills. Much skill is required in handling the calabash, and one woman will find a fair supply of gold where another will work all day and scarcely find a particle of the metal.
Of course, by this rude method of work the quantity of gold obtained is in very small proportion to the labor bestowed in obtaining it; and if the natives only knew the use of mercury, they would gain three or four times as much gold as they do at present. The quills, when filled with gold dust, are generally fastened to the hair, where they are supposed to be as ornamental as they are precious. The best time for gold washing is after violent rains, when the increased rush of water has brought down a fresh supply of sand from the upper regions. As one of the old voyagers quaintly remarked, “It raineth seldom, but every shower of rain is a shower of gold unto them, for with the violence of the water falling from the mountains it bringeth from them the gold.”
A good gold washer will procure in the course of a year a quantity of the dust which will purchase two slaves. The average price of a slave is ten “minkali,” each minkali being worth about 12£. 6s.; and being valued in goods at one musket, eighteen gun flints, twenty charges of powder, one cutlass, and forty-eight leaves of tobacco. The reader may judge what must be the quality of the musket and cutlass. Gold is weighed by the little familiar red and black seeds, called in Western Africa “tilikissi,” and each purchaser always has his own balances and his own weights. As might be supposed, both vendor and purchaser try to cheat each other. The gold finder mixes with the real gold dust inferior sand, made by melting copper and silver together, or by rubbing together copper filings and red coral powder. If larger pieces of gold were to be imitated, the usual plan was to make little nuggets of copper, and surround them with a mere shell of gold. This, of course, was the most dangerous imposition of the three, because the gold coating defied the test, and the fraud would not be discovered unless the nugget were cut in two—rather a tedious process when a great number were offered for sale.
As to the buyers, there was mostly something wrong about their balances; while as to the weights, they soaked the tilikissi seeds in melted butter to make them heavier, and sometimes made sham tilikissis of pebbles neatly ground down and colored.
In spite of all the drawbacks, the quantity of gold annually found in Ashanti-land is very great, and it is used by the richer natives in barbaric profusion. They know or care little about art. Their usual way of making the bracelets or armlets is this. The smith melts the gold in a little crucible of red clay, and then draws in the sand a little furrow into which he runs the gold, so as to make a rude and irregular bar or stick of metal. When cold, it is hammered along the sides so as to square them, and is then twisted into the spiral shape which seems to have instinctively impressed itself on gold workers of all ages and in all countries.
The collars, earrings, and other ornaments are made in this simple manner, and the wife of a chief would scarcely think herself dressed if she had not gold ornaments worth some eighty pounds. The great nobles, or Caboceers, wear on state occasions bracelets of such weight that they are obliged to rest their arms on the heads of little slave boys, who stand in front of them.
The Caboceers are very important personages, and in point of fact were on the eve of becoming to the Ashanti kingdom what the barons were to the English kingdom in the time of John. Indeed, they were gradually becoming so powerful and so numerous, that for many years the king of Ashanti has steadily pursued a policy of repression, and, when one of the Caboceers died, has refused to acknowledge a successor. The result of this wise policy is, that the Caboceers are now comparatively few in number, and even if they were all to combine against the king he could easily repress them.
An umbrella is the distinctive mark of the Caboceers, who, in the present day, exhibit an odd mixture of original savagery and partially acquired civilization. The Caboceers have the great privilege of sitting on stools when in the presence of the king. Moreover, “these men,” says Mr. W. Reade, “would be surrounded by their household suites, like the feudal lords of ancient days; their garments of costly foreign silks unravelled and woven anew into elaborate patterns, and thrown over the shoulder like the Roman toga, leaving the right arm bare; a silk fillet encircling the temples; Moorish charms, enclosed in small cases of gold and silver, suspended on their breasts, with necklaces made of ‘aggry beads,’ a peculiar stone found in the country, and resembling the ‘glein-ndyr’ of the ancient Britons; lumps of gold hanging from their wrists; while handsome girls would stand behind holding silver basins in their hands.”
An [illustration] on page 564 represents a Caboceer at the head of his wild soldiery, and well indicates the strange mixture of barbarity and culture which distinguishes this as well as other West African tribes. It will be seen from his seat that he is no very great horseman, and, indeed, the Caboceers are mostly held on their horses by two men, one on each side. When Mr. Duncan visited Western Africa, and mounted his horse to show the king how the English dragoons rode and fought, two of the retainers ran to his side, and passed their arms round him. It was not without some difficulty that he could make them understand that Englishmen rode without such assistance. The Caboceer’s dress consists of an ornamental turban, a jacket, and a loin cloth, mostly of white, and so disposed as to leave the middle of the body bare. On his feet he wears a remarkable sort of spur, the part which answers to the rowel being flat, squared, and rather deeply notched. It is used by striking or scoring the horse with the sharp angles, and not by the slight pricking movement with which an English jockey uses his spurs. The rowels, to use the analogous term, pass through a slit in an oval piece of leather, which aids in binding the spur on the heel. A pair of these curious spurs are now in my collection, and were presented by Dr. R. Irvine, R. N.
His weapons consist of the spear, bow, and arrows—the latter being mostly poisoned, and furnished with nasty-looking barbs extending for several inches below the head. The horse is almost hidden by its accoutrements, which are wonderfully like those of the knights of chivalry, save that instead of the brilliant emblazonings with which the housings of the chargers were covered, sentences from the Koran are substituted, and are scattered over the entire cloth. The headstall of the horse is made of leather, and, following the usual African fashion, is cut into a vast number of thongs.