Turning to the left along the broad avenue we saw upon a long pole a human head grinning at us, two vultures perched upon it eagerly stripping it. It was, Omar told me, the head of a thief. The street was crowded with people, who shouted to their gods as we passed in procession, and presently we came to a great fetish-gallows, from the cross beams of which hung the decomposing body of a ram. Some of the men forming our escort were a strangely-dressed set, their uniform consisting of striped tunics reaching to the knee, confined round the waist by belts profusely decorated with strips of leopard skin and tiny brass bells which tinkled musically as they moved. In their belts they carried several knives, while the musket and the little round cap of pangolin skin completed their equipment.
At last we reached the grove at Bantama on the out-skirts of the town, one of the three execution places. Several thousand people had assembled around a great tree where a number of gorgeous umbrellas of every hue and material had been erected. Many were ornamented with curious devices, and the tops of some bore little images of men and animals in gold and silver. Under the centre umbrella, upon a brass-nailed chair close to the tree, sat King Prempeh in regal splendour, surrounded by a crowd of chiefs, whose golden accoutrements glittered in the sun. Three scarlet-clad dwarfs were dancing before him amid the dense crowd of sword-bearers, fly-whiskers, court criers and minor officials. As he sat there, his thin flabby yellow face glistening with oil, he looked a truly regal figure, wearing upon his head a high black and gold crown, and on his neck and arms great golden beads and nuggets. His habit was to suck a large nut that looked like a big cigar, and as he sat there with it in his mouth it gave his face a strangely idiotic expression.
The whole Ashanti court had assembled at the theatre of human sacrifice.
As we approached the drumming grew louder, the roar of voices filled the air, and the great coloured umbrellas were seen whirling and bobbing above the heads of the surging crowd of natives. The great barrel-like drums, with their grim ornamentations, boomed forth, and bands of elephant-tusk horns added to the deafening din.
In the distance could be seen the great fetish-house, with its enormous high thatched roof wherein was supposed to be hidden Prempeh's great treasures of gold-dust and jewels. The ground whereon the glittering court had assembled was covered with the skulls and bones of thousands of former victims, and as we advanced slowly through the turbulent crowd we saw a sight that froze our blood. At the foot of the fetish tree was placed a great brass execution-bowl, about five feet in diameter. It was ornamented with four small lions and a number of knobs all around its rim, except at one part where there was a space for the victim's neck to rest upon the edge. The blood of those sacrificed to the gods was allowed to putrefy in this great bowl—which has recently passed into the hands of the English, and is now in London—and leaves of certain herbs being added it was considered valuable as a fetish medicine.
As we entered the cleared space between the chiefs and caboocers surrounding the King and the thousands of warriors and spectators, salvo after salvo of musketry was fired, until the smoke obscured all objects in our immediate vicinity. Around the sacrificial bowl were grouped a dozen or more royal executioners with their faces whitewashed and hideously decorated. Some upon their heads wore caps of monkey skin with the face in front, while others had high head-dresses of eagles' feathers, their tunics of long grasses being covered with magical charms tied in little bunches. All were copiously smeared with blood, while each wore a necklace of human teeth, and carried a heavy broad-bladed sword rusted by the blood of former victims. Behind them were twenty or thirty Ashantis, each with a knife stuck through both cheeks, to prevent the unhappy victims from asking the King to spare their lives, which, according to national law, must be granted, while a broad-bladed dagger was in many cases run under the shoulder-blades. They were prisoners who had tried to stir revolt, and were, we understood, to be sacrificed first. Our turn would come later.
The scene was horrible; we were appalled. At a signal from the King the first unfortunate wretch was instantly seized by two executioners and held over the bowl, while a third lifted his keen sword, and with a dull, sickening thud brought it down upon the poor fellow's neck, hacking into his spine until the head was severed. Then there arose a loud shout of triumph. The offering to the fetish was the signal for the most enthusiastic rejoicing, and the shouts of adulation were deafening. The people, ground down by a crafty priesthood, and steeped in the most degrading superstitions, looked upon the wholesale butchery that followed without a shudder. King, courtiers and slaves seemed seized with an insatiable desire for blood, and as one head fell after another, the cries of the victims drowned by the vociferous shouts of the onlookers, Omar and I stood shackled and trembling.
One after another the victims were thrown across the bowl and their life-blood gushed into it as the cruel swords descended, while the King gloated over the sight with an expression of pleasure upon his oily sinister face, until the heap of headless trunks grew large, and the number sacrificed must have been over a hundred.
Suddenly the chief executioner took one of his knives which had a human skull upon the hilt, and holding it up, commanded silence.
Then spoke the Ocra Betea, who, rising from his stool, waved his hand across the veritable Golgotha, crying: