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 no answer had been returned to two peaceable messages, that the Government intended to go to war and endeavour to crush them, they would sink all their political differences in the face of a great national calamity, and become once more a united people. Some said that the Governor was going to meet the envoys, whom rumour said were coming down, but such speakers forgot that that would be a most derogatory proceeding on the part of an individual representing Her Majesty: others even asserted that he intended, despite the well-known pacific tendencies of the Home Government, to bring on a war for some purpose of his own. Those, however, who had had the benefit of a former experience of the Governor, knew that he was possessed of an uncontrollable mania for playing at soldiers and commanding small expeditionary forces composed of policemen and carriers, and that this was the real reason of the proposed movement. So inopportune was the time he now selected for this pastime that only by the merest chance, as we shall see later, did he escape from rendering a peaceable solution of the Ashanti difficulty impossible.

On March 27th forty Sefwhee messengers, with two state-swords, who had arrived at Cape Coast on the previous day, had an interview with the Governor at Elmina. It was said they asked for powder, lead,