Page:The land of fetish.pdf/303

 "What!! You didn't think much of that marvellous simile? Why not?"

"Because nobody seems to know what it means."

"Well, I know, and I will tell you what it means—it is most ingenious. The mud-fish is a fish covered with venomous spines, which cause nasty wounds if you happen to touch them. The Governor said he was not a mud-fish, to re-assure Buaki, and let him know that he was not going to hurt him."

In the evening a high Colonial official said to me:—

"A pretty simile that of the Governor's about the mud-fish, wasn't it?"

"Yes; but its meaning doesn't seem very clear."

"Doesn't seem very clear? Why, my dear fellow, it is patent to the meanest intellect. The mud-fish is a worthless kind of fish that nobody would take the trouble to catch: the Governor used the comparison to mean that he was somebody of importance."

I have not made up my mind which of these interpretations to adopt; the reader can take any one he likes, but it seems to me that there is a good deal of haze about the subject.

The Ashantis, like the Adansis who had arrived on the 14th, were accommodated with exceedingly airy sheds in the camp, and this accession to our numbers brought up the sum-total of occupants to something