CHAPTER IX

ROAD-MAKER AND BUILDER

King Prempeh was the first celebrity to receive the attention of B.-P.  In his capital of Kumassi, which being interpreted is “the death-place,” this miserable barbarian had been practising the most odious cruelties for many years, ignoring British remonstrances, and failing, like another African potentate, to keep his word to successive British Governments.  Among the Ashantis at this time (1895) the blood-lust had got complete dominion, and the sacrifice of human life in the capital of their kingdom was so appalling that England was at last obliged to buckle on her armour.  To quote B.-P. in a characteristic utterance:  “To the Ashanti an execution was as attractive an entertainment as is a bull-fight to a Spaniard, or a football match to an Englishman.”  Even the most coddled schoolboy will appreciate the force of this comparison.

To give a general idea of these cruelties we will quote a vivid passage from Baden-Powell’s book, The Downfall of Prempeh:  “Any great public function was seized on as an excuse for human sacrifices.  There was the annual yam custom, or harvest festival, at which large numbers of victims were often offered to the gods.  The late king went every quarter to pay his devotions to the shades of his ancestors at Bantama, and this demanded the deaths of twenty men over the great bowl on each occasion.  On the death of any great personage, two of the household slaves were at once killed on the threshold of the door, in order to attend their master immediately in his new life, and his grave was afterwards lined with the bodies of more slaves, who were to form his retinue in the next world.  It was thought better if, during the burial, one of the attendant mourners could be stunned by a club and dropped, still breathing, into the grave before it was filled in....  Indeed, if the king desired an execution at any time, he did not look far for an excuse.  It is even said that on one occasion he preferred a richer colour in the red stucco on the walls of the palace, and that for this purpose the blood of four hundred virgins was used.”

The expedition to bring Mr. Prempeh to his senses was under the command of Sir Francis Scott, and Baden-Powell received the pink flimsy bearing the magic words, “You are selected to proceed on active service,” with a gush of elation, which, he tells us, a flimsy of another kind and of a more tangible value would fail to evoke.  Of course he was keen to go.  The expedition suggested romance, and it assured experience.  To plunge into the Gold Coast Hinterland is to find oneself in a world different from anything the imagination can conceive; civilisation is left an infinite number of miles behind, and the Londoner is brought face to face with what Thoreau calls the wild unhandselled globe.  The message was received by Baden-Powell on the 14th of November 1895, and on the 13th of December he was walking through the streets of Cape Coast Castle, and had noted how well trodden was the grave of the writer L.E.L., who lies buried in the courtyard of the castle.