A large body of natives were now kept at work on the road up to the
Prah. The swamps were made passable by bundles of brushwood thrown into
them, the streams were bridged and huts erected for the reception of the
white troops. These huts were constructed of bamboo, the beds being made
of lattice work of the same material, and were light and cool.
On the 9th of December the Himalaya and Tamar arrived, having on
board the 23d Regiment, a battalion of the Rifle Brigade, a battery
of artillery, and a company of engineers. On the 18th, the Surmatian
arrived with the 42d. All these ships were sent off for a cruise, with
orders to return on the 1st of January, when the troops were to be
landed. A large number of officers arrived a few days later to assist in
the organization of the transport corps.
Colonel Wood and Major Russell were by this time on the Prah with their
native regiments. These were formed principally of Houssas, Cossoos,
and men of other fighting Mahomedan tribes who had been brought down the
coast, together with companies from Bonny and some of the best of
the Fantis. The rest of the Fanti forces had been disbanded, as
being utterly useless for fighting purposes, and had been turned into
carriers.
On the 26th of December Frank started with the General's staff for the
front. The journey to the Prah was a pleasant one. The stations had been
arranged at easy marches from each other. At each of these, six huts
for the troops, each capable of holding seventy men, had been built,
together with some smaller huts for officers. Great filters formed
of iron tanks with sand and charcoal at the bottom, the invention of
Captain Crease, R.M.A., stood before the huts, with tubs at which the
native bearers could quench their thirst. Along by the side of the road
a single telegraph wire was supported on bamboos fifteen feet long.
Passing through Assaiboo they entered the thick bush. The giant cotton
trees had now shed their light feathery foliage, resembling that of an
acacia, and the straight, round, even trunks looked like the skeletons
of some giant or primeval vegetation rising above the sea of foliage
below. White lilies, pink flowers of a bulbous plant, clusters of yellow
acacia blossoms, occasionally brightened the roadside, and some of the
old village clearings were covered with a low bush bearing a yellow
blossom, and convolvuli white, buff, and pink. The second night the
party slept at Accroful, and the next day marched through Dunquah. This
was a great store station, but the white troops were not to halt there.
It had been a large town, but the Ashantis had entirely destroyed it, as
well as every other village between the Prah and the coast. Every fruit
tree in the clearing had also been destroyed, and at Dunquah they had
even cut down a great cotton tree which was looked upon as a fetish by
the Fantis. It had taken them seven days' incessant work to overthrow
this giant of the forest.
The next halting place was Yancoomassie. When approaching Mansue the
character of the forest changed. The undergrowth disappeared and the
high trees grew thick and close. The plantain, which furnishes an
abundant supply of fruit to the natives and had sustained the Ashanti
army during its stay south of the Prah, before abundant, extended no
further. Mansue stood, like other native villages, on rising ground, but
the heavy rains which still fell every day and the deep swamps around
rendered it a most unhealthy station.
Beyond Mansue the forest was thick and gloomy. There was little
undergrowth, but a perfect wilderness of climbers clustered round the
trees, twisting in a thousand fantastic windings, and finally running
down to the ground, where they took fresh root and formed props to the
dead tree their embrace had killed. Not a flower was to be seen, but
ferns grew by the roadside in luxuriance. Butterflies were scarce, but
dragonflies darted along like sparks of fire. The road had the advantage
of being shady and cool, but the heavy rain and traffic had made it
everywhere slippery, and in many places inches deep in mud, while all
the efforts of the engineers and working parties had failed to overcome
the swamps.
It was a relief to the party when they emerged from the forests into the
little clearings where villages had once stood, for the gloom and quiet
of the great forest weighed upon the spirits. The monotonous too too of
the doves--not a slow dreamy cooing like that of the English variety,
but a sharp quick note repeated in endless succession--alone broke the
hush. The silence, the apparently never ending forest, the monotony of
rank vegetation, the absence of a breath of wind to rustle a leaf, were
most oppressive, and the feeling was not lessened by the dampness and
heaviness of the air, and the malarious exhalation and smell of decaying
vegetation arising from the swamps.
Sootah was the station beyond Mansue, beyond this Assin and Barracoo.
Beyond Sootah the odors of the forest became much more unpleasant, for
at Fazoo they passed the scene of the conflict between Colonel Wood's
regiment and the retiring Ashantis. In the forest beyond this were the
remains of a great camp of the enemy's, which extended for miles, and
hence to the Prah large numbers of Ashantis had dropped by the way or
had crawled into the forest to die, smitten by disease or rifle balls.
There was a general feeling of pleasure as the party emerged from the
forest into the large open camp at Prahsue. This clearing was twenty
acres in extent, and occupied an isthmus formed by a loop of the river.
The 2d West Indians were encamped here, and huts had been erected under
the shade of some lofty trees for the naval brigade. In the center was a
great square. On one side were the range of huts for the general and
his staff. Two sides of the square were formed by the huts for the white
troops. On the fourth was the hospital, the huts for the brigadier and
his staff, and the post office. Upon the river bank beyond the square
were the tents of the engineers and Rait's battery of artillery, and the
camps of Wood's and Russell's regiments. The river, some seventy yards
wide, ran round three sides of the camp thirty feet below its level.
The work which the engineers had accomplished was little less than
marvelous. Eighty miles of road had been cut and cleared, every stream,
however insignificant, had been bridged, and attempts made to corduroy
every swamp. This would have been no great feat through a soft wood
forest with the aid of good workmen. Here, however, the trees were for
the most part of extremely hard wood, teak and mahogany forming the
majority. The natives had no idea of using an axe. Their only notion of
felling a tree was to squat down beside it and give it little hacking
chops with a large knife or a sabre.
With such means and such men as these the mere work of cutting and
making the roads and bridging the streams was enormous. But not only was
this done but the stations were all stockaded, and huts erected for
the reception of four hundred and fifty men and officers, and immense
quantities of stores, at each post. Major Home, commanding the
engineers, was the life and soul of the work, and to him more than any
other man was the expedition indebted for its success. He was nobly
seconded by Buckle, Bell, Mann, Cotton, Skinner, Bates and Jeykyll,
officers of his own corps, and by Hearle of the marines, and Hare of the
22d, attached to them. Long before daylight his men were off to their
work, long after nightfall they returned utterly exhausted to camp.
Upon the 1st of January, 1874, Sir Garnet Wolseley, with his staff,
among whom Frank was now reckoned, reached the Prah. During the eight
days which elapsed before the white troops came up Frank found much to
amuse him. The engineers were at work, aided by the sailors of the naval
brigade, which arrived two days after the general, in erecting a bridge
across the Prah. The sailors worked, stripped to the waist, in the muddy
water of the river, which was about seven feet deep in the middle. When
tired of watching these he would wander into the camp of the native
regiments, and chat with the men, whose astonishment at finding a young
Englishman able to converse in their language, for the Fanti and Ashanti
dialects differ but little, was unbounded. Sometimes he would be sent
for to headquarters to translate to Captain Buller, the head of the
intelligence department, the statements of prisoners brought in by the
scouts, who, under Lord Gifford, had penetrated many miles beyond the
Prah.
Everywhere these found dead bodies by the side of the road, showing
the state to which the Ashanti army was reduced in its retreat. The
prisoners brought in were unanimous in saying that great uneasiness had
been produced at Coomassie by the news of the advance of the British to
the Prah. The king had written to Ammon Quatia, severely blaming him for
his conduct of the campaign, and for the great loss of life among his
army.
All sorts of portents were happening at Coomassie, to the great
disturbance of the mind of the people. Some of those related singularly
resembled those said to have occurred before the capture of Rome by
the Goths. An aerolite had fallen in the marketplace of Coomassie, and,
still more strange, a child was born which was at once able to converse
fluently. This youthful prodigy was placed in a room by itself, with
guards around it to prevent anyone having converse with the supernatural
visitant. In the morning, however, it was gone, and in its place was
found a bundle of dead leaves. The fetish men having been consulted
declared that this signified that Coomassie itself would disappear,
and would become nothing but a bundle of dead leaves. This had greatly
exercised the credulous there.
Two days after his arrival Frank went down at sunset to bathe in the
river. He had just reached the bank when he heard a cry among some white
soldiers bathing there, and was just in time to see one of them pulled
under water by an alligator, which had seized him by the leg. Frank had
so often heard what was the best thing to do that he at once threw off
his Norfolk jacket, plunged into the stream, and swam to the spot where
the eddy on the surface showed that a struggle was going on beneath. The
water was too muddy to see far through it, but Frank speedily came upon
the alligator, and finding its eyes, shoved his thumbs into them. In
an instant the creature relaxed his hold of his prey and made off, and
Frank, seizing the wounded man, swam with him to shore amid the loud
cheers of the sailors. The soldier, who proved to be a marine, was
insensible, and his leg was nearly severed above the ankle. He soon
recovered consciousness, and, being carried to the camp, his leg was
amputated below the knee, and he was soon afterwards taken down to the
coast.
It had been known that there were alligators in the river, a young one
about a yard long having been captured and tied up like a dog in the
camp, with a string round its neck. But it was thought that the noise
of building the bridge, and the movement on the banks, would have driven
them away. After this incident bathing was for the most part abandoned.
The affair made Frank a great favorite in the naval brigade, and of a
night he would, after dinner, generally repair there, and sit by
the great bonfires, which the tars kept up, and listen to the jovial
choruses which they raised around them.
Two days after the arrival of Sir Garnet, an ambassador came down
from the king with a letter, inquiring indignantly why the English had
attacked the Ashanti troops, and why they had advanced to the Prah.
An opportunity was taken to impress him with the nature of the English
arms. A Gatling gun was placed on the river bank, and its fire directed
upon the surface, and the fountain of water which rose as the steady
stream of bullets struck its surface astonished, and evidently filled
with awe, the Ashanti ambassador. On the following day this emissary
took his departure for Coomassie with a letter to the king.
On the 12th the messengers returned with an unsatisfactory answer to
Sir Garnet's letter; they brought with them Mr. Kuhne, one of the German
missionaries. He said that it was reported in Coomassie that twenty
thousand out of the forty thousand Ashantis who had crossed the Prah
had died. It is probable that this was exaggerated, but Mr. Kuhne had
counted two hundred and seventy-six men carrying boxes containing the
bones of chiefs and leading men. As these would have fared better than
the common herd they would have suffered less from famine and dysentery.
The army had for the most part broken up into small parties and gone to
their villages. The wrath of the king was great, and all the chiefs who
accompanied the army had been fined and otherwise punished. Mr. Kuhne
said that when Sir Garnet's letter arrived, the question of peace or war
had been hotly contested at a council. The chiefs who had been in the
late expedition were unanimous in deprecating any further attempt to
contend with the white man. Those who had remained at home, and who
knew nothing of the white man's arms, or white man's valor, were for war
rather than surrender.
Mr. Kuhne was unable to form any opinion what the final determination
would be. The German missionary had no doubt been restored as a sort of
peace offering. He was in a bad state of health, and as his brother
and his brother's wife were among the captives, the Ashanti monarch
calculated that anxiety for the fate of his relatives would induce him
to argue as strongly as possible in favor of peace.
Frank left the camp on the Prah some days before the arrival of the
white troops, having moved forward with the scouts under Lord Gifford,
to whom his knowledge of the country and language proved very valuable.
The scouts did their work well. The Ashantis were in considerable
numbers, but fell back gradually without fighting. Russell's regiment
were in support, and they pressed forward until they neared the foot of
the Adansee Hills. On the 16th Rait's artillery and Wood's regiment
were to advance with two hundred men of the 2d West Indians. The Naval
Brigade, the Rifle Brigade, the 42d, and a hundred men of the 23d would
be up on the Prah on the 17th.
News came down that fresh portents had happened at Coomassie. The word
signifies the town under the tree, the town being so called because its
founder sat under a broad tree, surrounded by his warriors, while he
laid out the plan of the future town. The marketplace was situated round
the tree, which became the great fetish tree of the town, under which
human sacrifices were offered. On the 6th, the day upon which Sir Garnet
sent his ultimatum to the king, a bird of ill omen was seen to perch
upon it, and half an hour afterwards a tornado sprang up and the fetish
tree was levelled to the ground. This caused an immense sensation in
Coomassie, which was heightened when Sir Garnet's letter arrived, and
proved to be dated upon the day upon which the fetish tree had fallen.
The Adansee Hills are very steep and covered with trees, but without
undergrowth. It had been supposed that the Ashantis would make their
first stand here. Lord Gifford led the way up with the scouts, Russell's
regiment following behind. Frank accompanied Major Russell. When Gifford
neared the crest a priest came forward with five or six supporters and
shouted to him to go back, for that five thousand men were waiting there
to destroy them. Gifford paused for a moment to allow Russell with his
regiment to come within supporting distance, and then made a rush with
his scouts for the crest. It was found deserted, the priest and his
followers having fled hastily, when they found that neither curses nor
the imaginary force availed to prevent the British from advancing.
The Adansee Hills are about six hundred feet high. Between them and the
Prah the country was once thick with towns and villages inhabited by
the Assins. These people, however, were so harassed by the Ashantis
that they were forced to abandon their country and settle in the British
protectorate south of the Prah.
Had the Adansee Hills been held by European troops the position would
have been extremely strong. A hill if clear of trees is of immense
advantage to men armed with rifles and supported by artillery, but to
men armed only with guns carrying slugs a distance of fifty yards,
the advantage is not marked, especially when, as is the case with the
Ashantis, they always fire high. The crest of the hill was very narrow,
indeed a mere saddle, with some eight or ten yards only of level ground
between the steep descents on either side. From this point the scouts
perceived the first town in the territory of the King of Adansee, one
of the five great kings of Ashanti. The scouts and Russell's regiment
halted on the top of the hill, and the next morning the scouts went out
skirmishing towards Queesa. The war drum could be heard beating in the
town, but no opposition was offered. It was not, however, considered
prudent to push beyond the foot of the hill until more troops came up.
The scouts therefore contented themselves with keeping guard, while for
the next four days Russell's men and the engineers labored incessantly,
as they had done all the way from the Prah, in making the road over the
hill practicable.
During this time the scouts often pushed up close to Queesa, and
reported that the soldiers and population were fast deserting the town.
On the fifth day it was found to be totally deserted, and Major Russell
moved the headquarters of his regiment down into it. The white officers
were much surprised with the structure of the huts of this place, which
was exactly similar to that of those of Coomassie, with their red clay,
their alcoved bed places, and their little courts one behind the other.
Major Russell established himself in the chief's palace, which was
exactly like the other houses except that the alcoves were very lofty,
and their roofs supported by pillars. These, with their red paint, their
arabesque adornments, and their quaint character, gave the courtyard the
precise appearance of an Egyptian temple.
The question whether the Ashantis would or would not fight was still
eagerly debated. Upon the one hand it was urged that if the Ashantis had
meant to attack us they would have disputed every foot of the passage
through the woods after we had once crossed the Prah. Had they done
so it may be confidently affirmed that we could never have got to
Coomassie. Their policy should have been to avoid any pitched battle,
but to throng the woods on either side, continually harassing the troops
on their march, preventing the men working on the roads, and rendering
it impossible for the carriers to go along unless protected on either
side by lines of troops. Even when unopposed it was difficult enough
to keep the carriers, who were constantly deserting, but had they been
exposed to continuous attacks there would have been no possibility of
keeping them together.
It was then a strong argument in favor of peace that we had been
permitted to advance thirty miles into their country without a shot
being fired. Upon the other hand no messengers had been sent down to
meet us, no ambassadors had brought messages from the king. This silence
was ominous; nor were other signs wanting. At one place a fetish,
consisting of a wooden gun and several wooden daggers all pointing
towards us, was placed in the middle of the road. Several kids had been
found buried in calabashes in the path pierced through and through with
stakes; while a short distance outside Queesa the dead body of a slave
killed and mutilated but a few hours before we entered it was hanging
from a tree. Other fetishes of a more common sort were to be met at
every step, lines of worsted and cotton stretched across the road, rags
hung upon bushes, and other negro trumperies of the same kind.
Five days later the Naval Brigade, with Wood's regiment and Rait's
battery, marched into Queesa, and the same afternoon the whole marched
forward to Fomana, the capital of Adansee, situated half a mile only
from Queesa. This was a large town capable of containing some seven
or eight thousand inhabitants. The architecture was similar to that
of Queesa, but the king's palace was a large structure covering a
considerable extent of ground. Here were the apartments of the king
himself, of his wives, the fetish room, and the room for execution,
still smelling horribly of the blood with which the floor and walls
were sprinkled. The first and largest court of the palace had really
an imposing effect. It was some thirty feet square with an apartment
or alcove on each side. The roofs of these alcoves were supported by
columns about twenty-five feet high. As in all the buildings the lower
parts were of red clay, the upper of white, all being covered with deep
arabesque patterns.
Fomana was one of the most pleasant stations which the troops had
reached since leaving the coast. It lay high above the sea, and the
temperature was considerably lower than that of the stations south of
the hills. A nice breeze sprung up each day about noon. The nights
were comparatively free from fog, and the town itself stood upon rising
ground resembling in form an inverted saucer. The streets were very
wide, with large trees at intervals every twenty or thirty yards along
the middle of the road.