I had the good fortune to be lodged in the best quarters at Cape Coast, where I remained till the most favourable season for travelling had come on, and also till I had gone through my seasoning fever, with which I was attacked a few days after my arrival, as well as my servant, who, poor fellow! sank under it. Although the greatest attention and medical aid was afforded to him, he died on the 4th of August, 1844, at a time when I was so ill myself that Mr. Hutton would not allow my attendants to make me acquainted with it till four days after it occurred. Of my own illness, though it was very severe, I can scarcely remember any thing, as I slept nearly the whole of the time. The late Governor, Mr. Maclean, who at the time had not left Cape Coast, was remarkably kind and attentive to me. His departure was very much regretted, as he had given great satisfaction to the merchants while he was Governor.
During my stay there, Mr. Hutton was building two very fine houses, one at Cape Coast, and the other in the wood-land tract about two miles to the north of it, on a spot commanding a beautiful prospect over a salt lake, about three quarters of a mile distant, with the sea, near Elmina, beyond it.
In this country, where manual labour is requisite, the greatest difficulty is experienced in getting the people to perform it as they ought. My attention to these undertakings for the space of two months gave me a very good opportunity of forming a fair estimate of the character and habits of the natives at Cape Coast.
Mr. Hutton had, at the time of my arrival, about one hundred hands employed, and I can conscientiously affirm that fifteen Englishmen would have done considerably more work in any set time than these hundred Fantees. The men are, without exception, of all the Africans I have yet seen the laziest and dirtiest. They seem in every respect inferior, both in body and mind, to their neighbours, the Ashantees. They are remarkably dull of comprehension, and, unless constantly watched, will lie down and do nothing. Even if one of the party is appointed as foreman to the rest, he will be just as idle as the others. They seem to have no idea of anything like conscience.
Some time ago Mr. Hutton supplied his labourers with wheelbarrows to convey the stone from the quarry to the building they were working at; but instead of wheeling the barrowful of stones, they put it upon their heads, declaring it was harder work to wheel the barrow than to carry it. They will go the distance of a mile to the quarry, and come back, perhaps twenty in a gang, with one stone, not weighing more than nine pounds each, upon his head, so tedious is their manner of building, nor will they be put out of their own way on any account. As they can live almost for nothing, their only motive for working is to procure what they consider luxuries, such as rum, tobacco, and aatum, the name they give the cloth tied round their waist. They can live at the rate of a penny a-day upon yams or cassada (manioc) and fish, which is remarkably cheap. This penny, and now and then a shilling, is earned by one of their wives, of whom they have sometimes several. The wife goes into the thickets with a child tied upon her back, and returns with a bundle of wood upon her head, which she sells in the town. All the drudgery, in fact, is done by the women, while their lazy husbands lie stretched outside of their huts smoking.
The Fantees are very superstitious, and one party or another is daily making Fetish[2] (performing a religious service) either for the advancement and success of some business in which they are interested, or invoking a curse upon some person who may have thwarted the effect of their fetish. For instance, if any person fall sick, the head fetish-man summons all his relations to meet on a certain day, at a certain time, to try by their fetish whether the sick man will recover; but if a surgeon attending him is successful in making a cure, they invoke a curse upon him for causing the fetish to lie. At Cape Coast their fetish sometimes consists of a bundle of rags bound together like a child’s doll; at other times a little image of clay, rudely fashioned, somewhat in the human shape, is placed in some public spot, frequently by the roadside. These images, or fetishes, often remain in the same position and on the same spot undisturbed for a fortnight or three weeks.
The natives have a great many customs or holy days in the course of the year, during which it is unbearable to live in the town, such is the noise and uproar of the rabble. Their yells, roaring, and discord are indescribable. They have a sort of rude drum, about four feet in length, and one in diameter, called tenti or kin Kasi. This is carried on a man’s head in a horizontal position, and is beaten by another man walking behind him, who hammers away like a smith on his anvil, without any regard to time. This huge drum is accompanied by horns and long wooden pipes, the sound of which resembles the bellowing of oxen. The procession parades up and down the town nearly the whole day, and keeps up an irregular fire of musketry. On all these occasions an immense quantity of rum (which is only threepence per pint) is drunk. If any person of note dies, the relatives and neighbours assemble in front of his house, and continue drinking and smoking, yelling and firing off guns nearly the whole of the day; and one of the family invariably sacrifices a dog, to procure a safe passage to Heaven for the deceased. If none of the deceased’s relations happen to have a dog in their possession, they sally out in a party and kill the first dog they meet.
They are very superstitious also respecting burial, and frequently bury the gold rings and trinkets worn by the deceased along with his body, so that the graves are frequently opened again for the sake of the property contained in them. An instance of this occurred while I was there. A Mrs. Brown, the widowed mother of a mulatto so named, who had been employed as interpreter on board the Albert steamer in the late Niger expedition, died in consequence of a blow from a younger son. The elder brother, having been much straitened in his circumstances through misconduct, ordered his mother to be interred in the same grave as one of her daughters, who had been buried with all her trinkets upon her. Brown, as an excuse, declared that it was customary to bury the parent below, and the sons and daughters above. Thus the sister was disinterred and stripped of her ornaments, which he put, as he no doubt thought, to a better use than leaving them for the worms.
The King’s custom, or solemnity in honour of the King of Cape Coast, is kept annually for fourteen days, in which interval none of his subjects are allowed to fire off a gun, or beat a kin kasi, (drum), nor are any dogs, sheep, or goats allowed to be seen in the streets, or in any public place, on pain of death. This commemoration is tolerably observed, but though King Agray’s black flag is kept flying during the whole period, I am convinced that it is more for the gratification of his people, than from any wish of his own that such a ridiculous observance is continued; for he is a very intelligent venerable old man, highly civilized and polite in his manners, and very well disposed towards the English. His character is very much admired by all the merchants established there, as well as by his own subjects. From what I could learn, he is ever ready to patronize any effort on the part of the English to civilize and improve his people. In person he is a tall, thin, muscular, old man, though his years number upwards of threescore and ten.
A few days previously one of his messengers called upon me in great haste, to inform me that his Majesty was very anxious to see me in the dress of the First Life Guards that day. It happened that a short time before, the troops from Cape Coast having been ordered out for exercise, I was requested to accompany them in uniform, and in less than ten minutes the King was acquainted with the fact. Like the other kings in this country, he has spies to carry to him all news of however little importance.