Chapter 21. The Advance To The Prah

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_ 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 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. _

Read next: Chapter 22. The Battle Of Amoaful

Read previous: Chapter 20. The White Troops

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