Page:The land of fetish.pdf/194

 their army, to the chief command of which Awooah, the brother of the late general, Amanquatia, succeeded. King Mensah also placed on record how keenly he felt the injustice of the British in not calling upon the king of Djuabin to pay a fair proportion of the war indemnity which had been inflicted on the entire kingdom by Sir Garnet Wolseley, the whole of which Ashanti, though reduced to half her former area, had now to pay.

In July, King Mensah addressed a letter to the European merchants of Cape Coast Castle, complaining of the action of the king of Djuabin, that he was kidnapping Ashantis living on the Djuabin frontier, and closing the roads to trade. This letter was duly forwarded to the Government, but only elicited from the Governor the reply "that he would act with reference to the affairs of the interior as seemed to him advisable."

There can be no doubt but that the head of the king of Djuabin was turned by his sudden accession to power; he sent insulting messages to Mensah, invited the tribes within the protectorate to come and share the spoils of Coomassie with him; and by the middle of August 1875 the excitement on each side had become so intense that no mere negotiation or mediation could have averted war, whatever it might have effected if it had been employed at an earlier