where, finding themselves in a land of gold, they defended themselves, and purchased their independence with their blood. Of these petty kingdoms Ashantee and Dinkira were the most prominent, and a long rivalry existed between them. The King of Dinkira having seduced one of the King of Ashantee's wives, sent to his court as an embassadress, war was proclaimed, and Dinkira was destroyed. This was in the year 1132 (A.D. 1719), as preserved in the Moslem records. From that moment Ashantee from a monarchy became an empire, which extended to the very border of the sea, the coast-tribe (Fanti) being his vassals. Thus, unlike other inland nations, the Ashantees have free communication with the white men, and that ruinous system of middle-men which prevails almost every where else is here unknown.

The King of Ashantee is apparently an utter despot. There are, however, certain restraints upon his power, in the shape of a House of Lords, consisting of four nobles, and a House of Commons, called the Assembly of the Captains. In state affairs the king receives their opinions privately, that his infallibility may not be doubted by the vulgar.

The most remarkable of the customs of Ashantee, though not peculiar to that kingdom, being almost universal in Africa, is the hereditary succession, which does not descend from father to son, but from the king to his brother, to his nephew, and so on. This is a legal illustration of the proverb, "It is a wise child that knows its own father." When a daughter of the royal house bears a son, it is certain that he has the blood royal; but they reason that even queens may be frail, and that the offspring of the king's wife may be possibly the begotten of a slave.

The sisters of the king may negotiate with whom and with as many as they please, for the contribution of royal heirs, provided always that the man is strong, good-looking, and of a decent position in life: conditions which these ladies can not, I am sure, find very harsh.

The king is forbidden by law to have more than three thousand three hundred and thirty-three wives. It is not known whether he is compelled to maintain that moderate number; but the fact is that almost all of these are plantation slaves: the connubial institution is very different here from in England, and a wife is chosen rather for the strength of her limbs than for the softness of her features.

And when one's wife is found to possess the art of pleasing, and

is skilled in the science of seduction, how do you think she is employed in this virtuous land? The punishment in crim. con. cases is death or slavery, redeemable by a heavy fine; it is even forbidden, as it was by Lycurgus, to praise the beauty of another man's wife, that being adultery by implication. Well, these charming women are taken from the plow-tail, or rather from their spadehandles, and are elevated to the rank of Delilahs. They insnare foolish youths with their smiles, intoxicate them with their caresses, and are surprised by the husband at an appropriate moment. This is a perfect trade over many parts of Africa, and the King of Ashantee is not ashamed, they say, to set his subjects the example. Go and read La Sirène, by Count Xavier de Montépin, and tell me whether truth is not stranger, ay, and sadder than fiction. There the siren has one moment of compunction ere she yields her victim to the assassins: as for these women-but it is not the women, it is the men whom we must blame. A woman rarely commits a wicked action to which she has not been inveigled or driven by a man.

I will describe to you a lady's social progress in this country. As a little girl she goes decently naked, a custom which Columbus observed to be common to most primitive races. When Nature announces her womanhood, she is clothed: often before this period she has been purchased and betrothed; and no very long time is allowed to elapse before she is claimed by her husband.

The young bride is painted with chalk, giving her the appearance of wearing a lace jacket on a black velvet body; a silk robe descends from the waist to the ankle, fitting over a bustle; on her arms and ankles are massive bracelets, and her head is covered with ornaments of gold.

A crowd of young companions parade her in the streets, singing a song in honor of her virginity. Then the spouses retire; the crowd remain without; for the spirit of jealous curiosity, so powerful in the negro, demands a proof of the lady's purity. If the husband is satisfied, he "gives her chalk," as their saying is, and she comes out sprinkled with chalk-powder. If not, the dowry is returned to the husband, though sometimes it becomes a matter of litigation, the law being the same as that prescribed in Deuteronomy.

When conception becomes apparent, the girl goes through a ceremony of abuse, and is pelted down to the sea, where she is cleansed. She is then set aside; charms are bound on her wrists,

spells are muttered over her, and, by a wise sanitary regulation, her husband is not allowed to cohabit with her from that time until she has finished nursing her child.

A woman in labor is placed on a stool, as in most of the countries of the East, and it is considered disgraceful in her to utter a cry. The mother is convalescent a few hours afterward, and hides from mankind, being held impure for seven days. On the eighth day the child is baptized by the father, who squirts a mouthful of rum into its face, and calls it by the name of some relative or intimate friend. The mother carries it on her bustle, exposed to all weathers, in consequence of which a very large proportion die: she suckles it for two years or more; and as long as the child is under her care she is exempt from labor, and is treated with great respect.

"And what becomes of her when she is an old woman?" you will ask.

Now with us old age feminine has its pains and its regrets, but it also has little pleasures and privileges of its own: the old woman in the alms-house, with her composed features and her placid cup of tea, or the ancient duchess who receives the homage of young lords with an appalling dignity, are happy enough in their own way, though the one must sometimes think of Jem the Carter, with whom she romped in hay-fields and kept company on Sunday "arternoons," and though the other must sometimes remember the proud days of her beauty, and must now and then look at her shriveled skin with something like a sigh.

But it is difficult and it is distressing to conceive that this young girl, with her merry black eyes, and her gleaming smiles, and all her sweet and enticing ways, will some day become a hag, with pendent breasts, and bleared eyes, and hideous yellow teeth, and features falling to the ape's—a wretch who works like a slave, and who is beaten by the man whose savage passions have drained her of her youth and her beauty before her time.

D

enter the king's presence on all-fours. There they wallow in palatial dust, and only speak when they are spoken to. This, done at public audiences, imposes upon visitors, and is devised with a salutary purpose. The mob, seeing the men whom they honor thus submissive before the sovereign, feel it little disgrace to be slaves, and do not think of sedition. They have no democratic organs or pot-house Ciceros there to make them discontented without bettering their condition. In private, the nobility, from slaves, become councilors; and it is in private that the real business of the state is done.

Drunkenness is bad taste in England, but in Dahomey it is a sin; and the late king kept a drunkard on rum, after the Spartan principle, that his beastly appearance might deter the people from this vice.

In republican Africa and in polished Europe adultery is a venial offense, a simple matter of bullocks and sheep, or pounds, shillings, and pence. Under this barbarous despot it is a crime, which can only be expiated by life-long slavery or by sudden death. In Ashantee the law is milder, and the vicious results I have described.

Those whom we call "social evils" are here recognized as social necessities. To counteract the only evil of polygamy (as far as Africa is concerned), viz., the inability of the poorer people to purchase wives, the government organizes a body of women, who "ply their nefarious trade" on fixed days at a regulated price, and who add to the royal revenue by paying a tax. This constitution is certainly indelicate; but indecorum, of all vices the most censured in England, is among these miserable people no vice at all, since it happens to be conducive to connubial virtue.

The River Volta alone separates the two great empires of Africa, and which is the greater of the two? That has always been a matter of argument.

I accede to Ashantee superior wealth and population, but I think it stands to reason that Dahomey must prove victorious in pitched battles. Both derive their power from the European trade. The wealth of Ashantee lies in her gold mines, of Dahomey in her slaves. The Ashantees dig for their luxuries, the Dahomans fight for them. The latter nation is in fact a miscellaneous banditti, for there are few pure Dahomans. Agriculture and the arts are discouraged: the nation is an army, war is their trade, men are their spoil. The constitution of Amazons does

not appear to me an extraordinary one. In Africa the sphere of woman is slavery. Among the agricultural tribes she is made to till the ground; among the pastoral, to tend the herds; in golden Ashantee, to work at the mines; in fighting Dahomey, to join the

army.

She is also employed in diplomatic missions and in commercial enterprise. She is shepherd, agriculturist, warrior, trader, embassadress, and sometimes queen. In this practical country one meets with admirable illustrations of the axiom of Plato, in the fifth book of his Republic, that, "So far as her nature is concerned, the woman is admissible to all pursuits as well as the man."

Dahomey has become celebrated not only by its army of Amazons, but by its Siquiahi, the watering-of-the-graves-of-theancestors: the translation is Hibernian; for the graves are watered with blood, which is not water, although on such occasions it flows as if it were.

A huge platform is erected in the centre of the market-place, and is encircled by a parapet breast-high. On this platform are tents, gorgeous umbrellas, banners, cloths, and all the insignia of native wealth and power. There are heaps of cowries, and tobacco, and kegs of rum to distribute to the mob; the king's wives, present at the ceremony, are as composed as Spanish ladies at a bull-fight, as also are the victims themselves, with whose blood the graves of the king's ancestors are to be watered.

Below there is a savage and naked mob.

When the presents with which the king indirectly pays his warriors have been flung down and scrambled for, the victims, with white caps on their heads and lashed down in small canoes, are borne to the edge of the parapet, and the mob cry, "Feed us, king! feed us, king, for we are hungry." They are then thrown over, and are dispatched by the men beneath.

Descriptions of this revolting custom, as it is popularly called, have from time to time reached England, and have excited a strong feeling upon the subject. Missions have been dispatched to this monarch in the hope of inducing him to abolish these barbarities. They have failed, and must always and inevitably fail, as those who understand African constitutions will admit.

Human sacrifices are perpetrated by all the pagan nations of Africa; the more powerful the nation, the grander the sacrifice. It enters into the African religion as it entered into all the relig