The G.A. Henty

by G. A. Henty

  The party soon arrived at the camp, which consisted of some bell tents and the little huts of a few hundred natives. This, indeed, was only the place where the latter were first received and armed, and they were then sent up the river in the steamboat belonging to the expedition, to the great camp some thirty miles higher.

  The expedition consisted only of some seven or eight English officers. Captain Glover of the royal navy was in command, with Mr. Goldsworthy and Captain Sartorius as his assistants. There were four other officers, two doctors, and an officer of commissariat. This little body had the whole work of drilling and keeping in order some eight or ten thousand men. They were generals, colonels, sergeants, quartermasters, storekeepers, and diplomatists, all at once, and from daybreak until late at night were incessantly at work. There were at least a dozen petty kings in camp, all of whom had to be kept in a good temper, and this was by no means the smallest of Captain Glover’s difficulties, as upon the slightest ground for discontent each of these was ready at once to march away with his followers. The most reliable portion of Captain Glover’s force were some 250 Houssas, and as many Yorabas. In addition to all their work with the native allies, the officers of the expedition had succeeded in drilling both these bodies until they had obtained a very fair amount of discipline.

  After strolling through the camp the visitors went to look on at the distribution of arms and accouterments to a hundred freshly arrived natives. They were served out with blue smocks, made of serge, and blue nightcaps, which had the result of transforming a fine looking body of natives, upright in carriage, and graceful in their toga-like attire, into a set of awkward looking, clumsy negroes. A haversack, water bottle, belts, cap pouch, and ammunition pouch, were also handed to each to their utter bewilderment, and it was easy to foresee that at the end of the first day’s march the whole of these, to them utterly useless articles, would be thrown aside. They brightened up, however, when the guns were delivered to them. The first impulse of each was to examine his piece carefully, to try its balance by taking aim at distant objects, then to carefully rub off any little spot of rust that could be detected, lastly to take out the ramrod and let it fall into the barrel, to judge by the ring whether it was clean inside.

  Thence the visitors strolled away to watch a number of Houssas in hot pursuit of some bullocks, which were to be put on board the steamers and taken up the river to the great camp. These had broken loose in the night, and the chase was an exciting one. Although some fifty or sixty men were engaged in the hunt it took no less than four hours to capture the requisite number, and seven Houssas were more or less injured by the charges of the desperate little animals, which possessed wonderful strength and endurance, although no larger than moderate sized donkeys. They were only captured at last by hoops being thrown over their horns, and even when thrown down required the efforts of five or six men to tie them. They were finally got to the wharf by two men each: one went ahead with the rope attached to the animal’s horn, the other kept behind, holding a rope fastened to one of the hind legs. Every bull made the most determined efforts to get at the man in front, who kept on at a run, the animal being checked when it got too close by the man behind pulling at its hind leg. When it turned to attack him the man in front again pulled at his rope. So most of them were brought down to the landing place, and there with great difficulty again thrown down, tied, and carried bodily on board. Some of them were so unmanageable that they had to be carried all the way down to the landing place. If English cattle possessed the strength and obstinate fury of these little animals, Copenhagen Fields would have to be removed farther from London, or the entrance swept by machine guns, for a charge of the cattle would clear the streets of London.

  After spending an amusing day on shore, the party returned on board ship. Captain Glover’s expedition, although composed of only seven or eight English officers and costing the country comparatively nothing, accomplished great things, but its doings were almost ignored by England. Crossing the river they completely defeated the native tribes there, who were in alliance with the Ashantis, after some hard fighting, and thus prevented an invasion of our territory on that side. In addition to this they pushed forward into the interior and absolutely arrived at Coomassie two days after Sir Garnet Wolseley.

  It is true that the attention of the Ashantis was so much occupied by the advance of the white force that they paid but little attention to that advancing from the Volta; but none the less is the credit due to the indomitable perseverance and the immensity of the work accomplished by Captain Glover and his officers. Alone and single handed, they overcame all the enormous difficulties raised by the apathy, indolence, and self importance of the numerous petty chiefs whose followers constituted the army, infused something of their own spirit among their followers, and persuaded them to march without white allies against the hitherto invincible army of the Ashantis. Not a tithe of the credit due to them has been given to the officers of this little force.

  Captain Glover invited his visitors to pass the night on shore, offering to place a tent at their disposal; but the mosquitoes are so numerous and troublesome along the swampy shore of the Volta that the invitations were declined, and the whole party returned on board the Decoy. Next day the anchor was hove and the ship’s head turned to the west; and two days later, after a pleasant and uneventful voyage, she was again off Cape Coast, and Frank, taking leave of his kind entertainers, returned on shore and reported himself as ready to perform any duty that might be assigned to him.

  Until the force advanced, he had nothing to do, and spent a good deal of his time watching the carriers starting with provisions for the Prah, and the doings of the negroes.

  The order had now been passed by the chiefs at a meeting called by Sir Garnet, that every able bodied man should work as a carrier, and while parties of men were sent to the villages round to fetch in people thence, hunts took place in Cape Coast itself. Every negro found in the streets was seized by the police; protestation, indignation, and resistance, were equally in vain. An arm or the loin cloth was firmly griped, and the victim was run into the castle yard, amid the laughter of the lookers on, who consisted, after the first quarter of an hour, of women only. Then the search began in the houses, the chiefs indicating the localities in which men were likely to be found. Some police were set to watch outside while others went in to search. The women would at once deny that anyone was there, but a door was pretty sure to be found locked, and upon this being broken open the fugitive would be found hiding under a pile of clothes or mats. Sometimes he would leap through the windows, sometimes take to the flat roof, and as the houses join together in the most confused way the roofs offered immense facilities for escape, and most lively chases took place.

  No excuses or pretences availed. A man seen limping painfully along the street would, after a brief examination of his leg to see if there was any external mark which would account for the lameness, be sent at a round trot down the road, amid peals of laughter from the women and girls looking on.

  The indignation of some of the men thus seized, loaded and sent up country under a strong escort, was very funny, and their astonishment in some cases altogether unfeigned. Small shopkeepers who had never supposed that they would be called upon to labor for the defense of their freedom and country, found themselves with a barrel of pork upon their heads and a policeman with a loaded musket by their side proceeding up country for an indefinite period. A school teacher was missing, and was found to have gone up with a case of ammunition. Casual visitors from down the coast had their stay prolonged.

  Lazy Sierra Leone men, discharged by their masters for incurable idleness, and living doing nothing, earning nothing, kept by the kindness of friends and the aid of an occasional petty theft, found themselves, in spite of the European cut of their clothes, groaning under the weight of cases of preserved provisions.

  Everywhere the town was busy and animated, but it was in the castle courtyard Frank found most amusement. Here of a morning a
thousand negroes would be gathered, most of them men sent down from Dunquah, forming part of our native allied army. Their costumes were various but scant, their colors all shades of brown up to the deepest black. Their faces were all in a grin of amusement. The noise of talking and laughing was immense. All were squatted upon the ground, in front of each was a large keg labelled “pork.” Among them moved two or three commissariat officers in gray uniforms. At the order, “Now then, off with you,” the negroes would rise, take off their cloths, wrap them into pads, lift the barrels on to their heads, and go off at a brisk pace; the officer perhaps smartening up the last to leave with a cut with his stick, which would call forth a scream of laughter from all the others.

  When all the men had gone, the turn of the women came, and of these two or three hundred, who had been seated chattering and laughing against the walls, would now come forward and stoop to pick up the bags of biscuit laid out for them. Their appearance was most comical when they stooped to their work, their prodigious bustles forming an apex. At least two out of every three had babies seated on these bustles, kept firm against their backs by the cloth tightly wrapped round the mother’s body. But from the attitudes of the mothers the position was now reversed, the little black heads hanging downwards upon the dark brown backs of the women. These were always in the highest state of good temper, often indulging when not at work in a general dance, and continually singing, and clapping their hands.

  After the women had been got off three or four hundred boys and girls, of from eleven to fourteen years old, would start with small kegs of rice or meat weighing from twenty-five to thirty-five pounds. These small kegs had upon their first arrival been a cause of great bewilderment and annoyance to the commissariat officers, for no man or woman, unless by profession a juggler, could balance two long narrow barrels on the head. At last the happy idea struck an officer of the department that the children of the place might be utilized for the purpose. No sooner was it known that boys and girls could get half men’s wages for carrying up light loads, than there was a perfect rush of the juvenile population. Three hundred applied the first morning, four hundred the next. The glee of the youngsters was quite exuberant. All were accustomed to carry weights, such as great jars of water and baskets of yams, far heavier than those they were now called to take up the country; and the novel pleasure of earning money and of enjoying an expedition up the country delighted them immensely.

  Bullocks were now arriving from other parts of the coast, and although these would not live for any time at Cape Coast, it was thought they would do so long enough to afford the expedition a certain quantity of fresh meat; Australian meat, and salt pork, though valuable in their way, being poor food to men whose appetites are enfeebled by heat and exhaustion.

  It was not till upwards of six weeks after the fight at Abra Crampa that the last of the Ashanti army crossed the Prah. When arriving within a short distance of that river they had been met by seven thousand fresh troops, who had been sent by the king with orders that they were not to return until they had driven the English into the sea. Ammon Quatia’s army, however, although still, from the many reinforcements it had received, nearly twenty thousand strong, positively refused to do any more fighting until they had been home and rested, and their tales of the prowess of the white troops so checked the enthusiasm of the newcomers, that these decided to return with the rest.

  CHAPTER XXI

  THE ADVANCE TO THE PRAH

  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 Soota
h 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.