CHAPTER XIII.
A Teacher of the Gospel—Anamaboe—A third Message from the King—Affairs in Coomassie—Downfall of the War Party—False Rumours—Arrival of the Governor—A fourth Message from the King—Further Complications.
At 5 a.m. on February 9th the company paraded, and we marched off to Anamaboe, a distance of some twelve miles. We followed the Prah road as far as Inquabim market, that is for about four and a half miles, and then branched off to the right by a narrow and irregular bush-path over the Iron Hills: the track was too narrow for two men to walk abreast, and the procession consequently was strung out to some length. The few natives we met, astonished at the unusual spectacle of soldiers in this part of the country, and fancying we were going to seize them as carriers, as was done in 1874, bolted into the bush directly they caught sight of us, dropping their pots of water or loads of plantains in their flight.
After three hours’ marching over vile roads and steep hills we halted for an hour for breakfast at a small village in the bush about nine miles from Cape Coast; the men piled arms and bivouacked under some umbrella-trees in the centre of the village, while we, the officers, went towards a fairly good sort of house that stood close by; The owner and occupier of this mansion was a local preacher belonging to some missionary society, and he at once said, like any other native would have said, that we might make use of his house during our stay; but added, unlike any other native, provided we paid him: we made no difficulty about this, and proceeded to breakfast. While we were discussing that meal the preacher came in accompanied by two young girls, about twelve or thirteen years of age, attired in gorgeous native cloths, with their wool distorted into the latest Fanti fashion, and bedecked with brilliant handkerchiefs. We asked our host if he required anything, and he said “No,” he had only come to do a little business with us; we then inquired what that business might be, and, after a little beating about the bush, he informed us that, as Anamaboe was rather a dull place for Europeans, he thought we might like to buy these two girls, and, if so, we could have them for 4l. a piece. We asked him what authority he had for disposing of them in this unceremonious fashion, and he replied that they were his servants; but, on being pressed for further information, he confessed that they had been given to him by their parents in payment of some debt—in fact they were slaves. Much to his disappointment we felt ourselves obliged to decline his generous offer, which refusal he attributed entirely to the price, and lowered his terms first to 3l. 10s. and then to 3l., equally without success; while it was easy to see that the dusky damsels considered our rejection of the proposal as a proof of our exceedingly bad taste, and were as much disappointed and chagrined as their master.
A little abashed at the manner in which we had treated his offer, the preacher sent away the two young ladies to the back of his premises, and, beginning to have a faint idea that he had somehow not risen in our estimation, he endeavoured to retrieve his lost ground by falling back upon his more legitimate occupation, and asked that we should delay our departure in order that he might preach a sermon to the men. The hypocrisy of this proposition, coming as it did immediately after the other, was more than we could stand, and, expressing our thoughts in unequivocal terms, we paid him what we owed, went out, and got the men together ready to march off. The village pastor, however, was not going to be done out of an opportunity of showing forth before his unsophisticated flock, and, while we were preparing to start, delivered an exhortation in which “the sword of the Lord and of Gideon,” “soldiers of the Lord,” “smite with the edge of the sword,” and similar expressions, were jumbled together in a meaningless jargon; while when we moved off he strode alongside for some distance, open-mouthed, shouting in a discordant voice that highly-appropriate hymn called “Hold the Fort,” the work of those itinerant vendors of religion, Messrs. Moody and Sankey.
Whenever I meet such creatures as this local preacher I am moved to anger and restrain myself only with difficulty. Little children in England stint themselves in the luxury of sweets by giving of their scarce pence to aid the “poor missionaries,” and people who can ill afford to be charitable contribute their mite to further the promulgation of Christianity among heathen negroes; while scoundrels like this preacher batten upon the subscriptions thus raised, live in the best house in the village, acquire authority and wealth, and lead a happy life of idleness and vice. The persons who draw up those highly-coloured Mission Reports for the benefit of the gullible British public have a great deal to answer for.
We reached Anamaboe about 10 a.m., and found the fort prepared for our reception as well as could be expected under the circumstances. Of late years it had been occupied by two or three Fanti policemen with their numerous wives and dependents, and consequently was not as clean as it might have been; while no attempt had been made to make good the damage resulting from years of neglect. As a military position, the defects which were the cause of the surrender of the fort to the Ashantis in 1806 had not been remedied; the loopholes in the curtain were so made that fire could only be brought to bear on a point some forty yards from the walls, and persons beyond or within that distance could not be touched, while the embrasures yawned to such an extent that it would cost many lives to work guns so exposed to the fire of an enemy. Added to this, the native swish-houses extended on one side to within twenty yards of the walls; and on another side stood an immense house, built of stone, which actually overlooked the bastions and commanded the whole fort. As neither food nor water fit to drink were to be obtained here, these necessaries of life had to be forwarded daily from Cape Coast in surf-boats: sometimes the water, through some oversight, failed to appear, and we had to use the dysenteric liquid from the neighbouring pools, or go without; the former alternative was usually chosen, and, in spite of every precaution, such as boiling and filtering, a very large percentage of the men were constantly on the sick-list. As for the officers, three in number, we were always more or less ill. The town was in a condition of indescribable filth, and at times the stench which arose was so suffocating that, in spite of the intense heat, we were obliged to keep the doors and windows of our rooms closed. The streets, the yards, the bush—in fact the whole surface of the earth within a radius of half-a-mile from the fort—was covered with the collected refuse of half-a-century, which, under the combined influence of sun and rain, gave forth a curious variety of pestilential odours. Altogether, Anamaboe was an exceedingly salubrious and, under the circumstances, useful post.
On February 17th a third embassy arrived at Cape Coast from Coomassie, consisting of a linguist, a sword-bearer, three court-criers, and an old fetish priestess, the latter of whom threatened to utterly destroy both the English and the Fantis if they did not at once abandon any intention they might have of making war upon Ashanti. On the 18th these ambassadors, with the exception of the old lady, had an interview with the Lieutenant-Governor at Elmina, Enguie and Busumburu being again in attendance. After the preliminary formalities, Bendi, the linguist, said:—
“The king of Ashanti sends his compliments to his friend the Governor, and bids me to speak to the Governor’s interpreter, and to tell him to say to the Governor that some time ago an Assin trader, named Amankrah, came to Coomassie to trade, and stole away the king’s son Awoosoo down to the coast. When Prince Awoosoo ran away from Coomassie the king’s messengers came to ask the Governor to give him up. But by the law of England, if a man runs to the English Government for protection, he cannot be given up. The king of Ashanti says—‘When my son ran away I applied to the Governor to see if he could give him up to me. I have no palaver with the Assins, but Enguie, out of his own head, said to the Governor—‘If you do not give him up, some palaver will come.’ Your Excellency must know that that was not the king’s message.’