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 over a thousand. The envoys had brought with them two or three small, but apparently heavy, boxes, and these were supposed to contain gold dust, which the king had sent as an earnest of his desire for peace. Prince Buaki was a fine-looking man over six feet in height; I had known beforehand that he must be a handsome man, since the ladies of the blood-royal in Ashanti are only allowed to form connections with strikingly presentable men, so that, as the female branches take precedence of the male in furnishing heirs to the throne, the comeliness of their kings may be, as far as possible, assured; but I was not prepared to see such an unusually good specimen of the negro race. I was much struck too with the wonderful difference between the physiognomies of the chiefs and those of their followers and slaves, a difference which is barely perceptible among the tribes who have long been subject to us, such as the Fanti; but which, among the independent inland races, the most careless observer cannot help noticing. The chiefs have almost invariably a look of intelligence, and are generally of a fine physique; but the retainers and slaves possess features and characteristics of a very low type indeed. This of course is chiefly due to the principle of selection, as, for generations past, the chiefs, who are able to pick and choose, have selected the best-looking women for their wives, while the vulgar herd have had to take what they can get. On the sea-board this has been done also, but there the formation of an intermediate trading-class of natives, between the chiefs and the lower orders, has blended by imperceptible gradations the distinguishing characteristics of the two extremes. It is worthy of notice that the women whom the chiefs choose are those who, according to European ideas, possess the largest share of good looks; which goes far to prove that we have a common ideal of beauty, and that, in spite of the popular belief, negroes do not regard mountainous cheek bones, flattened noses, uptilted nostrils, and blubber lips, as the true types of loveliness.