sks, gold cups,
clocks, glass, china, pillows, guns, cloth, caskets, and cabinets; an
olla podrida, which resembled the contents of a sale room.

In many of the native apartments of the palace were signs that human
sacrifice had been carried on to the last minute. Several stools were
found covered with thick coatings of recently shed blood, and a horrible
smell of gore pervaded the whole palace, and, indeed, the whole town.
The palace was full of fetish objects just as trumpery and meaningless
as those in the humblest cottages. The king's private sitting room was,
like the rest, an open court with a tree growing in it. This tree was
covered with fetish objects, and thickly hung with spiders' webs. At
each end was a small but deep alcove with a royal chair, so that the
monarch could always sit on the shady side.

Along each side of the little court ran a sort of verandah, beneath
which was an immense assortment of little idols and fetishes of all
kinds.

From one of the verandahs a door opened into the king's bedroom, which
was about ten feet by eight. It was very dark, being lighted only by a
small window about a foot square, opening into the women's apartments.
At one end was the royal couch, a raised bedstead with curtains, and
upon a ledge by the near side (that is to say the king had to step over
the ledge to get into bed) were a number of pistols and other weapons,
among them an English general's sword, bearing the inscription, "From
Queen Victoria to the King of Ashanti." This sword was presented to the
predecessor of King Coffee. Upon the floor at the end opposite the
bed was a couch upon which the king could sit and talk with his wives
through the little window.

In the women's apartments all sorts of stuffs, some of European, some of
native manufacture, were found scattered about in the wildest confusion.
The terror and horror of the four or five hundred ladies, when they
found that their husband was about to abandon his palace and that
they would have no time to remove their treasured finery, can be well
imagined.

In almost every apartment and yard of the palace were very slightly
raised mounds, some no larger than a plate, others two or even three
feet long. These were whitewashed and presented a strong contrast to
the general red of the ground and lower walls. These patches marked
the places of graves. The whole palace, in fact, appeared to be little
better than a cemetery and a slaughterhouse in one.