A voyage to Africa: including a narrative of an embassy to one of the interior kingdoms in the year 1820. With remarks on the course and termination of the Niger, and other principal rivers in that country / By William Hutton. Illus. with maps and plates.

  • Hutton, William, Consul for Ashantee.
Date:
1821
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A voyage to Africa: including a narrative of an embassy to one of the interior kingdoms in the year 1820. With remarks on the course and termination of the Niger, and other principal rivers in that country / By William Hutton. Illus. with maps and plates. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tion. On one occasion, in 1809, when I lived at Commenda, which is twenty miles from Cape Coast, a poor woman was sacri¬ ficed to “ water the grave,” as it is called ; but the manner in which it was done was humane, in comparison with the method which is sometimes practised in torturing the victim. This woman’s head was se¬ vered from her body, by one blow with a sort of bill, and the executioner was imme¬ diately taken upon men’s shoulders, and carried round the town in triumph, for not having mangled the body. Another instance, of the same kind, hap¬ pened at Dixcove, in 1816, on the death of Tando Cudjoe, a cabboceer there, when a poor girl was sacrificed; and a man would, at the same time, have lost his life, had not Mr. Hutcheson, much to his credit, hu¬ manely interfered and prevented it. This practice of sacrificing human vic¬ tims, on the death of a person of distinc¬ tion, is not confined to one part of the coast; it being carried on, at other places, to a much greater extent, and even with more savage barbarity. g 3