formed that they were those of some one who had been dead many years. The commandant of the Fort informed me that a custom exists among them of burying their dead under the floor of their houses, and at an indefinite period reducing them thus to ashes to prevent their desecration. But I afterwards ascertained that in this instance they were the remains of a man who had committed suicide by shooting himself in a fit of anger with another. Suicide, it is said, was formerly very common among the natives. A law, passed a few years since in council at Cape Coast, that all guilty of this act should be burned to ashes, has greatly diminished its frequency.Strange Custom in relation to the Birth of the tenth Child.-Passed also a small enclosure of wicker work, in the centre of which was a mere shelter for a woman within, having an infant in her arms.
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