BUILT ON GOLD DUST.

Hokitika Guardian, 27 June 1925, Page 4

BUILT ON GOLD DUST.

Till-: XK\Y ASHANTI

(From ft. Ward Price in the Daily Mail.)

KUMASSI, ( Ashanti land) April Kit'h.

This town is built on gold dust and on blood, both spilt by order of its old (yet recent) kings. The gold is there because, by royal decree, gold dust, used as currency, which fell to the ground could not he gathered up on pain of death, but became a perquisite of the Crown, or rather the Golden iStool, which was the potent symbol of Ashanti monarchy. Wlmt the royal overseers missed still glitters ns precious dust in occasional spadefuls during the digging of foundations for the new buildings, which with the eager energy of a Western mining town, are being set up in the new Kumnssi.

The blood was a libation poured out far more freely. At regular intervals it gushed from the severed necks of hundreds of victims into the broad round bowl, which was canned oil one night by General Baden-Powell and now stands in the United Services Museum. For these sacrifices at the foot of the gnarled fetish-free that our troops blew up with dynamite in 1895. condemned criminals, 'slaves, and captives were gradually gatliered into pens for months ahead. Lite was so precarious an affair in the Ashanti of those times that their late was not regarded as one deserving pity. They were just the victims of implacable public duly, like a. British householder called to sit 111)-■«11 a jury.

When Ashanti kings really wanted to he severe they had a ritual which lasted from early morning until dusk. The rush lover who had seduced a

royal wife, for instance, was sent on a tour of all the cliiets in the neighbourhood of Kumnssi. Each Mould play his bloodthirsty little joke upon him. A favourite prank was to erase, with :i blunt, native Unite, a patch uf skin from tho small ot the victim s back and, presenting it before bis

goggling white eyes, to say. *‘ l licit l that is something you never saw in your life before!” An even better jest was to amputate bis legs blow the knees and then urge him to dance to the gay strumming of the tom-toms. After this the whimiseal ehieltnin would fall back guffawing on to his chair, under the shade ol his stntcumbreila. while tactful courtiers fanned him with elephants tails and echoed his mirth. BEER. 'WITH PR EM PHI I". Some of those very chiefs, under the identical umbrellas and dapped by the same fly-whisks, came decorously torward to shake the hand ot the Brinee of Wales to-day. Meanwhile. I myself was standing next to the archdespot of them all. the ex-King I’rempeh, who made two wars against us and paid for them with 27 years of exile in Hie Seychelles, from which he has just been allowed to return to his

native land. We later drank a glass ol beer together at the house of a Provincial Commissioner, and 1 learned that Prompeh has progressed so tar lrcnn human .sacrifices that Ids sole interests now are Christian missions and the fun* new house and 200-acres' farm with which the Gold Coast Government is endowing him. I’rempch is in the til ties and looks as vigorous as if they were his thirttic.s. Though now hut a private pensioner of the British, released on good behaviour, his word is still of paramount authority to the Ashantis. The chiels mentioned his release with gratitude in their speech of welcome to the Prince, and Prempeh's presence in the royal stand to-day lent added importance to the observance received l>v “Him who will be Hie Great Mliito King.” The Prince bad In bo described by this title because the term “King's.

son” conveys no sense of importance to the Ashantis. With (them, royal blood can only lie transmit led though a female; kings are not succeeded hy their male heirs hut by those ol the princess nearest to the “Stool.” A SWIFT TRANSFORMATION. The new Ashanti is a place ol townplanning, tarmac roads, prosperity and pence. Kumassi. its capital, presents the appearance of a strange grafting of the Riviera upon a Surrey common. Beside long, straight palmlined mails stand hrimd-vcrandaiied villas of liritish officials, .-ot about will) bushes of brilliant crimson hyhisciis. purple bougainvillea, dark blue “morning glory,” red Cana lilies. Tlicv make a garden suburb in a setting that only the tropics could provide. The native town is equally modern. Even the Hunting population of native traders, and carriers is lodged in regular lines of concrete houses, with wash-rooms and kitchens, Hint many British mining villages might

envy. A new station, hospitals, parks, even a "Burlington Arcade” of European shops with Hats above, stand on ground where '2-> years ago beehive lints were huddled in cramped clearing:- of the immemorial “bush.” The old low-basiioiieil. cream-walled fort, where Governor Hudson and bis wife were attacked and blockaded in 1000 and had to fight their way out to the coast, is being turned into a club. Its garden, where hundreds of ihe friendly native tribes defending them were found dead Imm hunger, is now the cricket ground. Modern Ashanti tribesmen, who have taken to the game with remarkable readiness there lfOat teams of white men who would be considered good players anywhere. THE POLICEMAN’S BENEDICTION It is a tribute to ottr national character of which every Briton is entitled to be proud that- this country ot what wore recently fierce savages, and a huge area, even more lately taken over, to the north are ruled by a sparse scattering of Political Officers in the strength of their just dealing and personality alone. As a force to support their authority they have only a battalion of the Gold Coast Regiment, a branch of the famous “Waffs,” who, when war broke out. marched straight across German Togokind and captured it and its great five-million-pound wireless station in the first three weeks of the war. They both drill and fight like the Grenadier Guards, whose march they play. With them, as civil power, is a picked body of police. Of their resource I was told, the story of an incident la-t week. One of them, sent to arrest a wanted man, found that he was a native lay-preacher and was in the midst of conducting a service. The native preacher marched up to the pulpit, secured his man, and then, with complete composure, made the congregation sitig “God Save the King” and pronounced the Benediction.

When nil English schoolboy munches a bar of chocolate he is paying a tribute to the Gold Coast, which grows half the world’s cocoa, with 210,000 tons. Over and above this valuable crop, it has now discovered a whole mountain of manganese, the world’s largest mine, literally within bowshot of the main railway-line. And it lias furthermore revealed a diamond mine, whose output, though in small stones, rose from TOO carats in 1010 to <30,000 carats last year.

In every department of Gobi Coast life that the Prince has seen, initiative, long vision, and resource on the part of its Administration are unmistakably revealed. Ashantis of the north and Eantis of the coast have every reason for gratitude that 30 years ago a British column, despite spears, arrows, and deadly ‘' On vegans" hacked a way through the jungle for Western leadership to reach them.