Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 212, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1920 — IN OLD COOMASSIE [ARTICLE]

IN OLD COOMASSIE

West African Town Not Always A Quiet Spot. — - ' Considered Thoroughly Up to Date Today, It Was the Scene, Twenty Years Ago, of Grim Tragedy of Frontier Warfare. Marjorie and Alan Letheridge, the special correspondents of the London Dally Telegraph in West Africa, write as follows from Coomassle, capital of the British colony of Ashantlland: At the present day Coomassle looks more like an Indian town than any other on the coast, and It is the pride of its residents that socially it is also like India. There are real grass tennis courts, a real .regimental band, and, before the war, there was the best polo team In the colony. Such it Is today, and yet, only twenty years ago, the quaint little fort In the center of the town was the scene of one of the grimmest sieges of Britain’s many frontier wars. Only the fact that all eyes were turned on South Africa at that time prevented the siege of Coomassle from taking its proper place in history. But we who have experienced the inconveniences and discomforts of trekking “de luxe,” and who knows how much Is needful In this part of the world to make life even bearable, can appreciate somewhat the sufferings borne by the defenders of the fort and the agonizing suspense that they endured until they hetrrd the first shots of the relieving force. The chief commissioner of Ashanti now Ilves In the fort which gave its meager protection to Captain Bishop, Lieutenant Ralph and Dr. Hay, with their 125 soldiers, during those interminable weeks. One now has an evening gin and bitters on the very spot from which those three officers could see the fires of burning villages and hear the walling of starving women and children. The Ashantis themselves seem to have shot their last bolt in the way of “frightfulness,” however, and no longer rank among the brave tribes of the colony. Only one trace of the romance of the past remains. ' Where Is the golden stool of Ashanti? It disappeared in 1896 and has never been seen since. On it the Ashanti chiefs had sat and dispensed their own peculiar form of justice from the earliest days and,’so far as is known, it is still concealed In the Innermost recesses of their land. But it-would be a brave European who openly attempted to track it to its hiding place, and there is just a possibility that it has been privately sold during a period of financial stress. Kofe Karikari, the King of Ashanti in 1875, behaved In an even more sacrilegious’’manner. He secretly opened the mausoleum of his ancestors and robbed their bodies of the golden ornaments without which no Ashanti of any means is ever lowered into the tomb. It would never have been discovered bad hot the lynx eyes of the queen-mother observed that the favorite wives of the king were Inexplicably wearing rings and bracelets of antique workmanship. A little investigation and she denounced him publicly. An admission of his guilt was the only tHng left for King Kofe. He had sold the major proportion of his plunder, so he magnlloquently informed his chiefs that he Intended to blow himself and them up with gunpowder in order to obliterate his shame. “We are quite ready to die as you request,” was their reply, “but blow yourself up first.” It Is perhaps superfluous to add that King Kofe did nothing of the sort