3-065-609 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Ashantee War: general market, Cape Coast Castle - from a sketch by our special artist, 1874. 'The market is a scene of great bustle, full of dark-skinned figures whose bright-coloured shawls and other attire, mostly of calico, are the more conspicuous by contrast. They chatter and chaffer, scold and quarrel, often bawling loudly to beat each other down. The women are of course the most busy, though not a few of them are loaded with their babies, slung in the fold of a shawl at the lower part of the back...The articles of food usually offered for sale are Guinea grain, maize, bananas, plantains, cassada [sic] root, melons, and gourds, hot pepper, and half-dried fish, with the fins of the shark, and some cheap kinds of flesh-meat,...[including] the flesh of the monkey...The packets of grain are made up in wrappages of leaves, containing about 2 lb., and are sold for three halfpence. Among the figures [shown] are those of a Krooboy sailor, from Cape Palmas, who is recognised by the peculiar mark on his nose; and a Fantee policeman, in the right-hand corner, wearing cotton knickerbockers and a small cap, with his constabulary truncheon in his hand. The boy lurking behind is trying to mimic this policeman's attitude of official dignity'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.