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Another Interview—Atassi—An Importunate Investigation—A Shocking Accident—Yancoomassie Assin—Draggled Plumes—An Unintentional Insult—A Scientific Experiment—The Palaver at Elmina—Our future Policy—Recent Explorations on the River Volta.

On the morning of the 17th of April the Governor had a chair and a table taken out into the forest and had a private interview with Prince Buaki. At this private interview, after a few preliminary compliments, Buaki said that the whole of the difficulty had arisen from the ignorance of the Lieutenant-Governor, and that had Governor Ussher been living there would have been no trouble of any kind. He asserted that Enguie was not instructed to make any threat, such as the threatened invasion of Assin, that in making it he had made a mistake, but that the Lieutenant-Governor had also made a mistake in not sending to Coomassie to know the meaning of the message he had received, before writing to England that the king of Ashanti meant war.

Buaki added—"As for the axe, I am old enough to know the meaning of every symbol in my country,