ABSTRACT
A serious disadvantage opposed to the English trade, is that the Ashantees wil1 purchase no tobacco hut the Portuguese, and that eagerly even at ~ oz. of gold the roll. Of this, (the Portuguese and Spanish slave ships regularly calling at Elmina,) the Dutch Governor-General is enabled to obtain frequent supplies, in exchange for canoes, two of which, though they cost him comparatively nothing, fetch S2 rolls of tobacco; and the General has sometimes receired 80 oz. of gold a day from the Ashantees for tobacco only. If they cannot have this tobacco, they will content themselves with that grown in the interior, of which I have brought a sample. A preference for the Dutch has long been natural to the Ashantees, from an earlier though limited intercourse with them, and from the natural impression, that the English settling amongst their enemies, the Fantees, have encouraged and assisted their provocations and resistance. With this bias in his favor, though the Dut~h market, destitute of supplies, had not been visited for many years, the talent of General Daendels, " callidum quicquid placuit,'' would no doubt have again raised it to a level with the English, creteris paribus; and his unlimited importation of powder and guns in the first place, with the still more valuable supplies of Portuguese tobacco he receives at present, as superior advantages, have, of course, possessed the Dutch market of superior inducements.
