Mr. John Smith was the officer selected by the Colonial Government to proceed to Gaman. Of that country nothing was then known beyond the fact that it had been engaged in several wars with Ashanti in the last decade of the eighteenth century. Sir John Dalrymple Hay, indeed, in his “Ashanti and the Gold Coast,” speaks (pp. 28 and 29) of “the plains of Massa,” “the Gaman cavalry,” and “the Mahometan soldiery of Gaman”; and that people was popularly believed to be an offshoot of the Houssa tribes and to possess Houssa characteristics. It was reserved for Mr. Smith to explode all these theories, and to make it known that the Gaman territory was covered with forest, like that of Ashanti, and that the people were fetish-worshippers, differing in no important particulars from the tribes in their neighbourhood.
Mr. Smith left Cape Coast on May 15th, 1879, and reached Jooquah, the seat of Quasi Kaye, king of Denkera, on the 16th. He left Jooquah on the 18th, with the king’s son, an ocrah, and a sword-bearer, and arrived at Becquai, the first Sefwhee town of importance, on June 6th. He remained at Becquai two days, and reached Yorso, the capital of Sefwhee, on June 10th. Here the Governor’s message, to the effect that Mr. Huydekuper’s statements were false, was delivered, after Mr. Smith had been detained twelve days waiting for the chiefs to assemble. In the course of conversation the king told him that the events of 1874 had decided him and his chiefs to give up their friendship with the Ashantis and to ally themselves with the British; but that when Mr. Huydekuper’s message to King Ajiman of Gaman became current his two principal chiefs had wished to return to their former friendly relations with Ashanti. The king wished to take an oath of allegiance to the British Government, but this was declined.
On June 21st Mr. Smith left Yorso, and, travelling through incessant rain and by flooded and almost impassable bush-paths, reached the village of Appemanim, about twelve miles from Buntuku, the capital of Gaman, on July 21st. Here a messenger from Buntuku met him, desiring him to wait until the king had prepared for his reception. On the 24th, having received no further information, he started for the capital, and met on the road a messenger from the king requesting him to remain a few days longer at Appemanin, as the king was not quite ready. He took no notice of this message, and, continuing on his way, reached Buntuku the same day.