Page:The land of fetish.pdf/293

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CHAPTER XVI.

Regulating the Sun—Arrival of the Ashanti Embassy—The Palaver—Ciceronian Eloquence—A Diplomatic Fiction—A beautiful simile—Physiognomies—Unhealthiness of the Camp.


Next morning I was awakened by a loud detonation, the echoes of which had scarcely died away when I heard a voice shout "His Excellency has arisen." This important declaration was at once followed by the réveille, played by four separate bugles in different parts of the camp; and, as I knew that there were not four corps in the encampment over night, I thought troops must have unexpectedly arrived, and so went hurriedly out of my tent to ascertain. I found that we had received no sudden accession to our strength: one bugler was blowing on behalf of the Houssa Constabulary, another for the half-dozen Sierra Leone policemen whom the Governor had brought with him, a third for the three or four Fanti police who were at Prahsu, and a fourth for the Kroo labourers. As the area of the camp was rather circumscribed of course one bugle would have been quite sufficient, but then how much glowing military