The king, accompanied by his wives and principal chiefs, occupies the summit of Ahtoh, and from time to time throws into the crowd handfuls of cowries and pieces of cloth, to be scrambled for. It is usually supposed that the Dahoman public is admitted to this scramble, but it is not so, and the whole ceremony is a fraud and a mere affectation of generosity. Soldiers alone are allowed to scramble, and the goods and cowries are their pay; for the Dahoman soldier, whether male or female, receives no regular stipend. They are fed and clothed at the king’s expense, and a moderate sum, the amount of which depends upon the success that has attended the royal arms during the past year, is set aside to be thrown from “Ahtoh.” The officers of the army generally contrive in this scramble to obtain all the cloth, leaving the rank and file to fight and struggle for the cowries; and in the wild confusion that ensues men are not unfrequently maimed or trodden to death. After the goods that have been set aside for this purpose have all been thrown into the panting and perspiring crowd, the victims for sacrifice are brought up on to Ahtoh, carried on men’s heads, and taken to the edge of the platform to be shown to the mob. They are greeted with wild yells and cries, the executioners thronging to the foot of the platform and brandishing their knives, while the crowd arm themselves with clubs and branches, calling on the king to feed them for they are hungry. After a short speech from the monarch the first victim is brought to the edge of the platform, and placed upright in his basket: the king then pushes the upper portion of the bound mass, the man falls over into the crowd in a second, and before the unfortunate wretch has time to recover from the shock of the fall the head is severed from the body; and the latter, after having been beaten into a shapeless mass by the shrieking and frenzied mob, is dragged by the heels to a pit at a little distance, and there left to be devoured by crows and buzzards. The number of men sacrificed in public is about fourteen, of whom the first three or four only are thrown down by the king; but, in addition to the public sacrifices, a certain number of victims are allotted to the Amazons, and are put to death by them within the precincts of the palace, where no man may be present to inquire too inquisitively into their peculiar rites. In Dahomey we have none of those wholesale massacres in which hundreds of human beings are sacrificed, such as occur from time to time in Ashanti. In the latter country dozens of slaves are immolated at the death of even a very minor chief, but in Dahomey only one slave is allowed to be executed at the demise of the person next in authority to the king himself, and the number annually put to death in the whole kingdom is said not to exceed eighty.