It was only natural that wherever he went for an expedition there were
two points to which Henty made frequent allusion. One was hospital
practice and the care of the sick and wounded; the other the
Commissariat Department and the supply of wholesome drinking water.
Plenty of such references are found in his account of the march to
Coomassie. There is mention of the women bearers rolling the
water-casks, and the native bearers, as they came in sight of one of the
village markets, depositing their burdens upon the ground, to make a
rush to the stores to lay in an extra supply for their wants during the
tramp through the forest, these supplies consisting of native bread and
dried fish. A rose by any other name, it is said, may smell as sweet;
so it may be taken for granted that the native name for bread--"Kanky"--
may not seriously affect its qualities. But when it comes to the dried
fish, of which the blacks are very fond, Henty has some remarks to make.
It is, though, by the way, rather curious what an instinctive liking
the natives of some countries have for preserved fish. For instance, in
the Malay Peninsula the natives have a great fancy for a concoction
which they term _blachang_, as an appetiser to flavour the dull
monotonous tameness of the ever-present boiled rice. This blachang is
compounded of shrimps, saved up till they are in a state of
putrefaction, and then beaten into a paste, the odour of which puts the
ripest snipe to the blush.
The dried fish of the West Coast of Africa are to an Englishman (unless
he has learned to like the flavour of asafoetida from long experience of
the smoked dainties called in India Bombay ducks) excessively nasty,
being smoked with some herb strongly resembling foetid gum in smell and
flavour.
But to turn from fish to soup. Henty discourses very wisely about the
latter in connection with the weariness and exhaustion consequent upon a
long tramp through the forest. After an experience of ten miles or so
of the hot, oppressive air there is no desire for eating, only a longing
for a cup of hot cocoa or tea, as soon as a fire can be set going--not
always an easy task in a land where the tropical downpours are
tremendous, saturating everything and rendering the superabundant wood
unfit to burn. Hunger, even after many hours' march, is completely
quenched, and it might be expected that the weary traveller would be
prone to fly for a stimulus to the commissariat rum. But to quote
Henty's own words, spoken from experience, "Soup is undoubtedly the
thing in this country"; and it grew to be the custom on the march, for
the first party who arrived at the halting-place to start a fire and
prepare what the soldiers spoke of as a jorum of hot broth, ready for
the next comers. "After a fatiguing day's march one has no appetite for
solid food, but a basin of soup sets one up at once."
This march to Coomassie was a dreary tramp through a jungle. The way
being along a narrow native path, the progress was so slow, encumbered
as they were with the necessaries of the journey, that on one occasion
it took more than two hours and a half to accomplish four miles, for the
heat was terribly trying. Yet to an observant eye the vegetation and
the mighty trees were most attractive. The undergrowth of the forest
consisted of broad-leaved plants, sword-bladed flags and the like, above
which the great plantains, looking like Brobdingnagian hart's-tongue
ferns, spread their great green, often split and ragged leaves, while
every here and there the cotton-trees, lovers of moist swampy land, rose
to an immense height. The heat all the time gradually increased, and
the men suffered severely during the delays caused by difficulties with
the baggage, or from the column having to climb over trunks of trees
that had fallen across the path, while sometimes it was necessary to
pass through swamps in which the water varied from ankle to knee deep.
On such occasions the halts were most trying, for a small obstacle
caused considerable delay in the passage of a column in single file.
Men would pause for a moment to pick their way before entering the
swamp; others would stop to turn up their trousers; and so the stoppage
would often accumulate until what was merely a second's wait of the
leading man became five minutes with the five hundredth. A wait of even
two minutes in the sun when there was not a breath of wind was most
trying, for great as was the heat, it was not felt so much while moving,
partly, perhaps, because the attention was directed to picking the way,
but more because of the profuse flow of perspiration. In reference to
this, though, Henty adds:--
"We did not suffer so much from the heat upon this coast as we do in
parts of India; but this was because there was always either a sea or a
land breeze blowing, which kept down the temperature in the shade to 84
or 85 degrees, which was by no means unpleasant. But when the sun
blazed down the heat was really intense. A thermometer placed in the
sun upon the wall of the hospital marked over 150 degrees for some hours
three or four days during the week, and I should say that the heat of
the bush, where there was no shade, was fully as great. Under these
circumstances it was not to be wondered at that a certain number of men
at the end of each day's march were found unfit for further work, and
had to be sent back in hammocks. Still, the number that fell out was
very small indeed, for men struggled to the last rather than give in."
When the men broke down, the officers noticed the poor fellows' flushed
faces and dull eyes, and said that they could only speak coherently with
an effort. These were cases of attacks by the sun, not of sunstroke,
for they were not sudden. The doctors called them sun-fever, and the
cure adopted was for the poor fellows to be sent back in hammocks to the
coast and placed on board ship, where in most cases the sea air restored
them to health.
Henty is pretty severe in his description of the Sierra Leone men, the
over-civilised and spoilt blacks with whom he came in contact during the
advance. He describes them as "the laziest, most discontented, most
self-sufficient and most impudent set of rascals the world contains.
They are no more," he says, "to be compared with the Fantis, or any of
the other native tribes, than light is to darkness."
In one case they started a mutiny, refusing to work unless money was
paid to them instead of stores; but they had Englishmen to deal with,
and when two of the ringleaders offered to strike the Control officers,
the latter at once seized them single-handed, forced them apart, and
treated them with firmness. Subsequently, as the men grew more
threatening and determined in their refusals to work, one of the naval
officers of the expedition, Captain Peel, interfered, and in true naval
fashion threatened that the first man who refused to obey orders should
be had up to the triangles and receive three dozen lashes. If the
fellow resisted after this, he declared he would summon his sailors on
shore, take him on board ship, and give him five dozen; while, if his
companions and fellow-mutineers attempted any violence, he would without
hesitation give orders for the sailors to fire. The threat sufficed.
The term "spoiled" has been applied by Henty to the Sierra Leone negro,
and he is not the first writer by many who has dealt with the vanity and
conceit that inflate the half-educated native. Allusion may be made to
the humorous description of Captain Marryat concerning the Badian boy:
"King George never fear, sir, long as Badian boy 'tan' 'tiff."
The Sierra Leone negro, says Henty, is in his native country lord and
master. He believes that he is the white man's equal in every point,
his superior in most. But this game of indolence and insolence did not
pay at Cape Coast. The negroes were enlisted in the service of the
Queen for six months, and although the work they did was less than that
which a Fanti girl of twelve years old would get through, it had to be
done without insolence or mutiny.
Night in the jungle produced its memories. After his day's tramp with
the troops and bearers, nine o'clock in the evening saw all but the
sentries lying down, and Henty retained for many years very vivid
recollections of these nights in the forest on the way to Coomassie--
close nights, with scarcely a breath of wind stirring. Somewhere
outside the hut where the correspondents sheltered, a native would be
demonstrating that chest troubles are not peculiar to our bronchitic,
foggy isles, for here in the midst of this tropic heat one of the blacks
would keep up a perpetual coughing that made sleep next to impossible;
next, a legion of rats could be heard gnawing and scratching, as they
tore about the shelters and raced in every direction over those who were
seeking for rest; and then there were the insects. The mosquitoes would
begin, and it seemed as if they knew the command in the old opera "The
Siege of Rochelle"--"Sound the trumpet boldly!" Every now and then,
too, upon fell intention bent, they would make a raid from above on some
unprotected face, while, to supplement this trouble, a colony of the
wretched insects which make their attacks from below--thin, flat,
silent, and secretive--carried on their assault, and retired afterwards
singularly misshapen, grown, to use the old countrified expression,
"quite out of knowledge."
"Now," says Henty, "I imagine that here were assembled all the elements
which make night horrible, with the exception only of indigestion after
a heavy supper. Had I been in any other country, I would have moved my
rug outside and slept there, but here such a proceeding would have
entailed an attack of fever. Consequently I had nothing to do but lie
still till morning."
Henty relates a sad incident in connection with the encounters with the
warlike Ashantis. He tells how the first of their merry party on the
screw steamer _Ambriz_, the vessel on which Sir Garnet Wolseley went out
to take up his command, had fallen, and "as usual," he says, "death had
taken one of the most gentle, brave, and kindly spirits from among
them." Lieutenant Wilmot, of the Royal Artillery, had fallen, fighting
like a hero, and the news of his death, when it was brought in, produced
the keenest regret among those who knew him. A promising young officer,
attached to his profession, a zealous worker, and a favourite with all
because of his quiet cheerfulness and modest unassuming manner, he was
one of the leaders in a reconnaissance that had been thought necessary.
The force consisted of a hundred of the West India Regiment, nine
hundred native allies, and some of the Hausas with rockets, the last
being under the command of the young officer. It seems that when he
approached the Ashanti camp an alarm was given, and the fight began at
once. The bush was extremely dense, and from out of its shelter the
enemy poured a fierce fire, and in those short minutes the British
officers had a severe lesson in the amount of confidence that could be
placed in the native allies. Out of the nine hundred levies only about
a hundred stood firm, and these might, for all the good they did, have
followed their king or chief. This "noble" warrior headed the party who
took to flight, and he, with his company, did not cease to run until
they were safe back at camp, while many did not even stop there, but
continued right on till they reached their own villages. Those that did
stand fast made use of their muskets in the wildest and most useless
manner, in contradistinction to the West India Regiment, which behaved
with great steadiness and gallantry, and for two hours kept up a heavy
Snider fire at their invisible foes, the Ashantis. Lieutenant Wilmot
had dependable men in the Hausas, who had been well trained in the use
of rockets, weapons formidable and awe-inspiring to natives; but early
in the fight he received a severe wound in the shoulder from one of the
Ashanti bullets fired from the bush, and this tore through flesh and
muscle and narrowly missed the bone. The wound was bad enough to have
necessitated immediate retirement; but it meant the loss of their leader
to the Hausas, and in spite of the severity of the wound and the acute
pain, he held on to his task, encouraging his men for two long hours,
during which time the rockets discharged against the enemy dislodged
them again and again from their strongholds. At last, when the gallant
young officer's work was pretty well done, another bullet struck him
down, and this time it was no mere painful flesh wound--the missile
found its way straight to his heart, and he fell back dead. With the
exception of one native, poor Wilmot was the only man killed. But the
Ashantis had stood their ground well, and the wounds of the attacking
party were many. So vigorous indeed was the defence of the brave
savages, that just about the time when Wilmot fell, Colonel Festing, who
was in command, and was also hit, seeing that an attempt was being made
by the enemy to cut off his retreat, fell back upon the village from
which the attack had been made. The many wounds were for the most part
very slight; for though put down as severe because received in spots
where a rifle bullet wound would have been a serious matter, they were
mostly inflicted by slugs from clumsy muskets. These pellets only
penetrated a short distance, with the result that the injuries only
entailed a day or two's confinement.
The death of poor young Wilmot moved the whole camp to deep feeling, and
the funeral took place at the cemetery of Cape Coast on the following
day. Sir Garnet Wolseley and the staff and nearly every officer in the
town attended, while the navy was represented by the officers from the
fleet. The procession was solemn and impressive, bringing to the minds
of many the sad little poem which recounts the burial of Sir John Moore.
The body had been brought down from Prospect House, to which it had
been first taken, and was placed in a room of the General Hospital. A
gun was brought, dragged by a party of marine artillerymen and marines,
who, commanded by a naval officer, had come ashore for the purpose. An
officer of the Royal Artillery superintended the preparations and
followed as chief mourner. As the coffin, covered by a flag, was
brought out and placed upon the gun carriage, all the officers saluted
their dead comrade, and then fell in behind at a slow march.
"Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note."
There was no military music, but Henty says: "I think the slow measured
tramp was more moving than any pomp or military display could have been.
Never before has such a procession of officers been seen on the Gold
Coast; and a crowd of natives assembled to look on."
The road led by the sea, and the dull moan of the surge was more
appropriate music than any made by mechanical instruments. A quarter of
a mile brought them to the cemetery, and as they stood around and
listened to the solemn words, "it is, I trust, no derogation to our
manliness to say that many a lip was bitten hard, many a hand dashed
across the face to hide that emotion which, however great the cause,
Englishmen always strive to conceal."
"During his month's stay at Cape Coast, Lieutenant Wilmot had assisted
Captain Rait to turn the wild Hausas into steady gunners. He had won
all hearts, and among us there was but one feeling--that of deep regret
for the unselfish young fellow who had left us but a few days before in
high health and spirits, and who was brought back only to be laid in his
lonely grave by the never-ceasing surf of the Atlantic Ocean."