insignia of office, and the Lieutenant-Governor then said that the king ought to have sent him something which he had seen before, and could therefore recognise. Upon this Enguie sarcastically observed that hitherto the Governor had seen nothing from the king but the golden axe, and as they had left Coomassie before that state weapon had been returned to the capital it was impossible that they could have brought it down; adding, "even if his Excellency would like to see it again, which I doubt." Everybody felt that the Lieutenant-Governor had not got the best of this little exchange of words, which had arisen through his groundless suspicion.
The ignorance of the country and mode of thought of the natives displayed by the Lieutenant-Governor's advisers militated very much against the taking of vigorous measures. A combination of native tribes against Ashanti was talked of, and men who ought to have known better did not hesitate to include the Gamans in this confederation. The truth was, that the fact that a Gaman embassy had visited the coast in 1879, and had stated that the whole nation was actuated by a bitter hostility to Ashanti, was remembered; while all the information gained by Mr. Smith in his mission to Buntuku, which tended to show that no such feeling of ill-will existed, was forgotten. No
