Shepherdstown register. [volume] (Shepherdstown, Va. [W. Va.]) 1849-1955, 1895-12-19
A Grove of skulls.

4
to form part of the expedition which
will be sent to subdue that dusky
monarch. Many of the soldiers now
doing duty accompanied Sir Garnet,
now Lord, Wolseley when he led an
expedition inland from the coast and
burned Coomassie, the capital of Ash
antee, twenty-one years ago.
This Grove of Skulls, as it has been
called, is the place where most of the
victims of the King are put to death.
Upon the occasion of the death of
King Koffee, the King of Ashsntee
whom Sir Garnet Wols.ley thrashed,
there were 1000 people killed in this
grove in accordance with the Ashantee
superstition which demands that when
members of the royal family die there
soul, must have a large guard of
honor
In this Grove of Skulls the ground
is of a dark brown color from the
blood which for generations has satu-
rated it. The approach to the grove
is worn broad and smooth by the feet
of the countless victims brought there
to meet their death.
Prempeh, the present King of Ash
antee, who has defed the British Gov
ernment, casting their ultimatum con-
temptuously aside and sending their
Commissioner back to the Gold Coast
in hurry, is alleged to be keeping ur
the human sacrifices upon scale never
equalled by Koffee in his bloodiest
moments. Thousands of helpless Afri-
cans are believed to have been put to
death by this sanguinary monarch
during the past year merely to crafty
a passing whim or to strengthen him
in his power through the fear which
these widespread murders arouse
among his subjects.
Prempeh has 1888 wives, golden
stool in place of a throne, an umbrella
ofstate and an old plug hat which he
wears instead of a crown, but the
queerest of all his possessions is the
Grove of Skulls. He keeps this place
guarded day and night and seems to
regard it with super.titious rever-
ence.
The vultures which, fat and gorged
with human flesh, roost among It's
branches or flop helplessly on the
ground, are held sacred, and to touch
one of them would mean death. For
the slightest of offences men are tor
tured and beheaded in this dreadful
place. The man who looks at one Of
the Kings 1888 wives (they occupy
two whole streets of Coomassis) is at
once taken out to the Grove of Skulls
and killed.
The friend, no less than the enemies
of the King are here bsheaded, for 1t
is one Of his pleasing customs to sus-
pect his friends of getting up conspi-
racies against him, and he rids him
self of them by wave of his hand.
Some of his wives he has had beheaded,
and not long ago he is alleged to have
chopped off the nsads of eighteen
mothers-in-law.
In the Grove of Skulls, where the
light of the sun rarely penetrates, the
ground is strewn with human bones
skulls are to be seen in countless thous-
ands, in one place piled up eight or
ten feet high, and human carcasses in
all stages of decomposition are numer-
GUS. The stencil Of the place is some
thing awful.
Henry NJ. Stanley, when he visited
this place during the expedition to
Coomassie, in 1874, says that he had
to hold handkerchief to his nose, and
could only stay there few minutes.
"As we drew near, says Stanley in
his book about Coomassie, "the foul
smells became so sufocating that we
were glad to produce our handker-
chiefs to prevent the intolerable and
almost palpable odOr from mounting
into the brain and overpowering us.
After some thirty PAGES we arrived be-
fore the dreadful scene, but it was al
most impossible to stop longer than to
take general view of the great Col
gotha. We saw some thirty or forty |
decapitated bodies in the last stages
of corruption, and countless skulls
which lay piled in heaps and scattered
over a wide extent The stoutest
heart and most stoical mind might |
have been appalled,.
Officers of the British Army, who
visited this grove in numbers, de-
scribed the awful scene in letters to
friends and relatives at home, many
of which were printed Several pho
tographs were taken of the place, show
u ...os,,,, 1,v.,1, -. 41v,