KFFUAH KRABAH

The claim of the appellant in this case for herself and as representing the members of the family of Awooah Alookoo was in effect for a declaration that the members of the family of Awooah Alookoo are the owners of a number of specified lands and villages and of the lands and town of Dutch Seccondee, a town in the Western province of the Gold Coast colony, and for an account of all monies aM profits received by the defendants on account of, or out of, the said lands, villages and town from the 1st January, 1918, and also for an order upon the defendants to deliver up a stool described in the statement of claim as "the native state stool" and certain paraphernalia in the possession or custody of the defendants. The defendants (thirty­two in number) included the-defendant Segu Winwah, the Ohene or chief of Dutch Seccondee, who was admittedly in actual possession of the state or town stool of Dutch Seccondee together with the paraphernalia thereof and in possession in a certain limited sense of the lands of Dutch Seccondee district, claimed by the defendants to be attached to the state stool. The other defendants were Odikroes or headmen under the stool of Dutch (Note.-Full Court Judgment reported in Gold Coast, Full Court Reports, 1926-29 at p. 501.) Seccondee or elders and councillors of that stool. Such of defendants as are Odikroes were respectively in immediate possession of the named villages claimed by the plaintiffs all of which villages are in Dutch Seccondee district. The plaintiffs named in the writ claimed to be acting for themselves and also on behalf of the members of the family of Awooah Alookoo who is said to have founded Dutch Seccondee more than 200 years ago. there were three other persons who joined in the action with Effuah .Amissah, but these persons are now dead and Effuah Amissah was the only surviving appellant hefore their Lord­ships. Dutch Seccondee (or Sekondi) is now a town of some importance situate in Ashanta, a sea coast state of the Gold Coast. The natives are Fantis and speak a dialect of the Fanti language. The land law in the Colony is based upon native customs, and as pointed out in a judgment of this Board delivered by Sir Arthur Channell in the case of Kobina Angll v. Cudjoe Attah (Unreported: P.C. Appeal No. 78 of 1915), the material customs must he proved in the first instance by calling witnesses acquainted with them until the particular customs have, by frequent proof in the Courts, become so notorious that the Court