Almost at the start of his campaigning in Ashanti Henty found himself
confronted with a serious problem, and anyone who, like the present
writer, had known him intimately for years will find it easy to imagine
the look of annoyance, puzzlement, and wrath that his features must have
displayed upon waking up to this fact. He was bound upon an important
mission, one which compelled him to keep in company with the
expeditionary army, or portions of it, just about to start from Cape
Coast Castle for the river Prah, in order to follow its windings through
the dense tropical forest; he was a thorough athlete, and ready to make
any shift to forward his progress that was possible, but he was now
brought face to face with the unexpected. An expedition, he found,
would start upon the following day at three, and as a matter of course,
in spite of experience and the knowledge that he must not burden himself
with what the old Romans so aptly called _impedimenta_ during a
campaign--a knowledge which had made him cut down his luggage to the
narrowest limits, in fact made him take nothing more than he was obliged
to take--he found to his dismay that it was impossible to procure
hammock-bearers. It was not that he wished to travel in luxurious
style, but nature had ordained that, to a European, walking through the
prevalent intense heat was an impossibility; not because of the intense
sunshine, for the way for the most part was through the shadow of the
dense tropical forest, but because of the strange lowering prostration
which followed the slightest exertion and compelled the most robust,
able-bodied men to throw themselves down and rest after walking a
distance that was absurdly short.
Hammock-bearers, however, he found it impossible to procure. He had
engaged eight men for the purpose, but they had all been summoned by
their chiefs the night before, and the whole of the men in the
neighbourhood who were not under arms as combatants were engaged by the
government as porters. In his ignorance of what he had to contend with,
he was ready to abandon the idea of having hammock-bearers, and prepared
to trust to his own walking powers and start afoot; but matters looked
very serious when he was informed by the native merchant he had employed
that it was impossible to find even four men to carry his tent and
necessaries. Four women could be obtained, and that was all!
Women! Henty indignantly declined, and turned over in his mind what he
should do. Then the idea struck him that the Army Control Department
might have more men than they wanted, or would possibly spare him a few.
Going up to the Castle Yard he found all in a state of animation and
bustle, with plenty of labourers rolling casks and carrying cases up
from the beach; but to his utter astonishment there were a hundred women
working with them, chattering and laughing, as they worked more
vigorously than the men. A few questions to one of the Control officers
brought the explanation that they were short of hands in consequence of
the number of men at work upon the roads and at the various stations,
while numbers more had obeyed the summons of their chiefs and deserted
to go to the war. There was a vessel laden with war stores that must be
unladen, and consequently the Control had been driven to enlist women
carriers to take up the bales of military greatcoats, blankets, and
waterproof sheets, in addition to other stores.
Henty began to think, urged on as he was by dire necessity, what is
sauce for the goose under certain circumstances may be sauce for the
gander. In other words, if it was not undignified for her Majesty's
officials to make use of women labour, he began to see that it ought not
to be bad form for him at such a supreme moment to follow their example.
So under these circumstances he went back to the native Whiteley and
accepted his offer to supply female bearers, and very shortly afterwards
four women were brought forward for him to inspect. He objected to two
of these at once, for one of them had what must be a great drawback to
her power of carrying a load, in the shape of a child of two years old
clinging to her back. The other was similarly circumstanced, but her
little one was a mere infant. It was, however, these or none; and as
the other two were smart good-looking girls of about sixteen years old,
and as many of the women working for the Control were handicapped with
children, he made no further demur, in spite of a lingering feeling of
doubt about the banter which he would receive from his colleagues and
the officers with whom he was brought in contact. It was so evidently
the fashion, however, to employ women, that he hoped to escape scot
free. But it was not so, for Henty's _Standard-bearers_ became one of
the jokes of the expedition.
Sir Evelyn Wood, in his exhaustive and chatty work, _From Midshipman to
Field-Marshal_, alludes to the state of affairs in connection with
bearers at the same time and place. He says: "The women have most of
the qualities which are lacking in the men. They are bright, cheerful,
and hard-working, and even under a hot fire never offer to leave the
spot in which we place them, and are very strong. As I paid over 130
pounds to women for carrying my loads up to Prahsu, I had many
opportunities of observing their strength and trustworthy character, for
to my knowledge no load was ever broken open or lost. They carried
fifty or sixty pounds from Cape Coast Castle to Prahsu, a distance of
seventy-four miles, for ten shillings, and the greater number of them
carried a baby astride of what London milliners used to call a `dress
improver'." High praise, this, for the weaker sex, when Sir Evelyn
describes the male bearers as being prone, as soon as they came under
fire, to throw their loads down on the ground and run for their lives.