Next morning we were off again at daybreak, and, after a three hours’ halt at Inkrau during the hottest part of the day, reached Mansu, 35½ miles from Cape Coast, at 4·30 p.m. On our arrival we found that the Governor with all his following had gone on to Prahsu, to which place it was decided we should follow, and the village would have been entirely deserted but for an officer of the constabulary, who had arrived the day before from Elmina _viâ_ Effutu, with some 70 Houssas, and who was waiting to rest his men. The native inhabitants had all been ejected from their dwellings, which, after a little preliminary cleaning, had been appropriated by the officers who formed the Governor’s retinue; traces of whose stay were still existing in the piles of beer and brandy bottles, and in the ridiculous and inappropriate names, such as “Rose Villa,” which were daubed on the swish-walls of the houses. In the centre of the town was a large shed, built of bamboo and palm-leaves, and open at the sides: this was called the Palaver House, and had been erected in the anticipation of the Governor here meeting the Ashanti envoys; but, as they had not arrived, it seemed that no palaver would be held here after all, and the rows of bamboo seats for the retinue, with a bamboo throne for His Excellency, flanked by more lowly seats for his immediate satellites, were doomed to waste their sweetness unused. We had the honour of occupying the gubernatorial residence, which was an ordinary swish-hut, to one side of which an appendage like a gigantic birdcage had been added, which, while it kept the vulgar herd at a respectful distance, permitted of their gazing through the bars at royalty within, in much the same manner as the British public would gaze at a new and strange beast in the gardens of the Zoological Society at Regent’s Park.