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, and I know that on no occasion has the golden axe been used by the Ashantis as the sign of a declaration of war. We have in Ashanti two symbols, both of which are used when we declare war. One of these is a sword. When that sword is sent to another people by the king of Ashanti, that is a declaration of war by Ashanti. The other is a certain cap. If a messenger were charged to declare war in the event of his ‘palaver’ being unsuccessful he would be entrusted with that cap by the king, and if he did declare war he would put on that cap, and that would be a proof that the declaration came from the king. The true meaning of the axe is this. It is a fetish. When the axe has been sent on any mission, that mission has always been successful, and we believe that it has some mysterious power which causes any request, that is supported by its presence, to be granted. The Lieutenant-Governor did not know the meaning of the axe, or the ways of our country; neither do the Fantis, yet the Lieutenant-Governor accepted the word of the Fantis before that of our people.” In conclusion he said he had come to make submission in the name of the king.[8] About a mile up stream from Prahsu is the village of Atassi, where there is another ford by which one of the divisions of the Ashanti army crossed in the invasion of 1873. Atassi itself consists of a group of some twelve huts, and there is a road, which would, for the country, be very good were it not slightly swampy in parts, leading to Assampah Neyeh, the first village on the road to the coast. The banks of the river are at Atassi of equal height, and for this reason, and because there are several large silk-cotton trees on either bank on which hawsers might be stretched to work subsidiary raft-bridges, it seems a more suitable spot for moving a force across the river than Prahsu; it is besides nearer.