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38 died, after a long sickness. Her death was announced by the firing of muskets, and the mourners going about the streets. As I walked out in the morning, I saw the mangled corpse of a poor female slave, who had been beheaded during the night, lying in the public street. . . . In the course of the day, I saw groups of the natives dancing around this victim of superstitious cruelty, with numerous frantic gestures, who seemed to be in the zenith of their happiness."

On arriving at Coomassie, Mr. Freeman again witnessed similar scenes of darkness. "Throughout the day," he writes, "I heard the horrid sound of the death drum, and was told in the evening that about twenty-five human beings had been sacrificed, some in the town, and some in the surrounding villages; the heads of those killed in the villages being brought into the town in baskets. I fear that there will be more of this awful work to-morrow."

Again visiting the capital of Ashantee in December, 1841, he says: "In the afternoon I heard that a chief had died, and that three human sacrifices had been made in the town. The mangled victims were left in the street as usual. O God, have mercy upon this benighted people! I saw a lad near my lodgings, who is one of the king's executioners. He had decapitated a poor victim that morning. He appeared to be from sixteen to eighteen years of age. I asked him how many persons he had executed. He answered, 'eighty.' Oh, awful fact! Eighty