The Governor’s visit--Pageant of Kings--Evil omens--The Fetish Grove--The fort--Loyal natives locked out--A fight--King Aguna’s triumph--Relief at last--Their perils--Saved by a dog--Second relief--Governor retires--Wait for Colonel Willcocks--The flag still flying--Lady Hodgson’s adventures. In 1874 Sir Garnet Wolseley captured Kumassi, the capital of the Ashantis, whose country lies in the interior of the Gold Coast, in West Africa. In March, 1900, Sir Frederick Hodgson, Governor of the Gold Coast, set out with Lady Hodgson and a large party of carriers and attendants to visit Ashantiland. They had no anticipation of any trouble arising, and on their march held several palavers with friendly Kings and chiefs. On Sunday, the 25th of March, they entered Kumassi in state. At the brow of a steep hill the European officials met the Governor’s party, and escorted them into the town. At the base of the hill they had to cross a swamp on a high causeway, and then ascend a shorter hill to the fort. Some children under the Basel missionaries sang “God Save the Queen!” at a spot where only a few years before human sacrifices and every species of horrible torture used to be enacted. Soon they passed under a triumphal arch, decorated with palms, having “Welcome” worked upon it in flowers. Near the fort were assembled in a gorgeous pageant native Kings and chiefs, with their followers, who all rose up to salute the Governor, while the royal umbrellas of state were rapidly whirled round and round to signify the general applause. Everything seemed to promise order and contentment. But that night Lady Hodgson was informed by her native servants that very bad fetishes, or portents, had been passed on the road through the forest. One of these was a fowl split open while still alive, and laid upon a fetish stone; another was a string of eggs twined about a fetish house; a third was the presence of little mounds of earth to represent graves--a token that the white man would find burial in Ashanti. The next day Lady Hodgson went to see the once famous Fetish Grove--the place into which the bodies of those slain for human sacrifices were thrown. Most of its trees had been blown up with dynamite in 1896, when our troops had marched in to restore order, and the bones and skulls had been buried. The executioners--a hereditary office--used to have a busy time in the old days, for every offence was punished by mutilation or death; for, as the King of the Quia country once told the boys at Harrow School, “We have no prisons, and we have to chop off ear or nose or hand, and let the rascal go.”