The siege of Kumasi—The Governor in 1900—The rebellion—The friendlies under the walls of the fort—The Ashanti warrior of ten years ago and the trader of to-day—The chances of the people in the fort—The retreat—The gallant men who conducted it—The men who were left behind—The rescue—Kumasi of to-day—The trade that comes to Kumasi as the trade of Britain came to London in the days of Augustus—The Chief Commissioner—The men needed to rule West Africa.

And when I had been to Obuasi nothing remained but to go up the line and see Kumasi and go as far beyond as the time at my disposal would allow.

I wonder if English-speaking people have forgotten yet the siege of Kumasi. For me, I shall never forget, and it stands out specially in my mind because I know some of the actors, and now I have seen the fort where the little tragedy took place; for, put it what way you will, it was a tragedy, for though the principals escaped, some with well-merited honour, the minor actors died, died like flies, and no man knoweth even their names.

It was dark when I reached Kumasi and got out on to the platform and was met by the kind cantonment magistrate, put into a hammock, and carried up to the fort, and was there received by the Chief Commissioner and his pretty bride, one of the two white women who make Kumasi their home, I had seen many forts, old forts along the Coast, but this fort was put up in 1896, and in 1900 its inmates were fighting for their lives. In it were shut up the Governor, his wife, two or three unfortunate Basel missionary women, a handful of troops, and all the other white people in the place. Standing on the verandah overlooking the town to-day, with a piano playing soft music and a dining-table within reach set out with damask and cut-glass and flowers and silver, it is hard to believe that those times are only ten years back. I have heard men talk of those days, and they are reticent; there are always things it seems they think they had better not tell, and I gather that the then Governor was not very much beloved, and that no one put much faith in him. The rebellion started somewhere to the north, and by the time it reached Kumasi it was too late to fly, for it was a good eight days\' hard march to the Coast through dense forest. The nearest possible safety outside that fort lay beyond the River Prah, at least three or four days\' march away. Every white man and many of the black who were not Ashantis had taken refuge in the fort, which was crowded to suffocation, and outside, in front of the fort, camped the friendlies, safe to a certain extent under the white man\'s guns, but dying slowly because the white man could not give what he had not got himself—food; and here they died, died of disease and hunger and wounds, and the reek of their dying poisoned the air so that the white man, starving behind his high walls of cement, was like to have his end accelerated by those who stood by him.

And out beyond, where the English town now stands, with broad streets planted with palms and mangoes and ficus, were the encampments of fierce Ashanti warriors, their cloths wound round their middles, their hair brushed fiercely back from their foreheads, their powder-flasks and bullet-bags slung across their shoulders, and their long Danes in their hands, the locks carefully covered with a shield of pigskin. The same man, very often the very same individual, walks about the streets of Kumasi to-day, and if he wears a tourist cap and a shirt, torn, ragged, and dirty, he is at least a peaceful citizen, and ten years hence he will probably, like the Creoles in Sierra Leone, be talking of “going home.” But it was ghastly in the fort then. It was small and it was crowded to suffocation. The nearest help was at Cape Coast, nigh on 200 miles away, and between lay the dense forest that no man lightly dared. The Ashanti too was the warrior of the Coast, and the difficulty was even to get carriers who would help to move a force against him. Shut up in the fort there they looked out and waited for help and waited for death that ever seemed coming closer and closer.

Kumasi is set in a hollow, and round it, pressing in on every side, was the great forest. Away to the south went the road to Cape Coast, but it was but a track kept open with the greatest difficulty, and hidden in the depths of the forest on either hand were these same warriors. Truly the chances of the people in the fort seemed small, small indeed. And day after day passed and there was no sign of help. Provisions were getting low, ammunition was running short, and from the Ashanti no mercy could be expected. It was war to the death. Any man or woman who fell into their hands could expect nothing but torture. I gather that his advisers would have had the Governor start for the Coast at once on the outbreak of hostilities, but he could not make up his mind, and lingered and lingered, hoping for the help that did not, that could not come. No one has ever had a word of praise for that Governor, though very gallantly the men under him came out of it. Starvation and death stared them all in the face; the gallant little garrison, heavily handicapped as it was, could certainly hold out but little longer, and the penalty of conquest was death—death, ghastly and horrible.

At last the Governor gave in and they started, a forlorn little company, for the River Prah, which had generally set a bound to Ashanti raids. The Governor\'s wife was carried in a hammock, but the Basel missionary women, who had escaped with only the clothes they stood up in, walked, for the hammock-boys were too weak to carry them, and they had to tramp through mud and swamp. The soldiers did their best to protect the forlorn company, the friendlies crowded after, a tumultuous, disorderly crew fleeing before their enemies, and those same enemies hung on their flanks, scrambled through the forest, ruthlessly cut off any stragglers, and poured volleys from their long Danes into the retreating company. Knowing the forest, I wonder that one man ever escaped alive to tell the tale; that the principal actors did, only shows that the Ashanti was not the practised warrior the Coast had always counted him. Had those Ashantis been the lean Pathan from the hills of northern India, not a solitary man would have lived to tell the tale, and the retreat from Kumasi would have taken its place with some of those pitiful stories of the Afghan Border. But one thing the Ashanti is not, he is not a good marksman. He blazes away with his long Dane, content to make a terrific row without making quite sure that every bullet has reached its billet. And so, thanks to the bad marksmanship of the Ashantis, that little company got through.

But let no man think I am in any way disparaging the men who fought here, who by their gallantry brought the Governor and his wife through. Major Armitage and his comrades were brave men of whom England may well be proud, men worthy to take their places beside Blake and Hawkins and all the gallant Britons whose names are inscribed on the roll of fame; they fought against desperate odds, they were cruelly hampered by the helpless people under their care, and they stuck beside them, though by so doing they risked not only death, but death by ghastly torture. Some of them died, some of them got through—they are with us still, young men, men in the prime of life—and when we tell our children tales of the way England won her colonies, we may well tell how that little company left the fort of Kumasi, every man who was wise with cyanide of potassium in his pocket, and fought his way down to the Prah.

But even though they went south they were not going to abandon Kumasi, which had been won at the cost of so much blood, and in that fort were left behind three white men and a company of native soldiers. All in good time the relief must come, and till then they must hold it.

A verandah hangs round the fort nowadays that the piping times of peace have come, but still upstairs in the rooms above are the platforms for the gun-carriages, and I climbed up on them and walked along the verandahs and wondered how those men must have felt who had looked out from the self-same place ten years ago. If no help came, if waiting were unduly prolonged, they would die, die like rats in a hole, and the men in their companies were dying daily. They were faithful, those dark soldiers of the Empire, but they were dying, dying of disease and hunger, and their officers could not help them, for were they not slowly dying themselves? Rumours there were of the relief force, but they were only rumours, and the spectres of disease and starvation grew daily. Could they hold out? Could they hold out? The tale has been told again and again, and will probably be told yet again in English story, and at last when they had well-nigh given up to despair they heard the sound of English guns, so different from the explosions of the long Danes, and presently there was the call of the bugles, and out into the open trotted a little fox terrier, the advance guard of the men who had come to save Kumasi.

And now the change. Kumasi has a train from the coast port of Sekondi every day, it has a population that exceeds that of the capital of the Gold Coast itself, every day the forest is receding and in the streets are growing up great buildings that mark only the beginning of a trade that is already making the wise wonder how it was when wealth lay on the ground for the picking up, England, who had it all within her grasp, was amiable enough to allow the greater portion of this wonderful land to fall to the lot of the French and Germans.

The forest used to close Kumasi in on every side. It is set in a hollow, and the tall trees and luxuriant green in the days that I have just spoken of threatened to overwhelm it. Now that sensation has passed away. Whatever Kumasi may be in the future, to-day it is a busy centre of life and trade. Where the fetish tree stood, the ground beneath its branches soaked with human blood and strewn with human bones, is now the centre of the town where the great buildings of the merchant princes of West Africa are rising. They are fine, but they are a blot on the landscape for all that. The nation that prides itself on being the colonising nation of the earth never makes any preparation for the expansion of its territory or the growth of its trade, so here in this conquered country, bought at the cost of so much sweat and blood, the authorities are allowing to go up, in the very heart of the town buildings, very handsome buildings without doubt, so close together that in a tropical land where fresh air is life itself they are preparing to take toll of the health of the unfortunates who will have to dwell and work there. But beyond that one grave mistake Kumasi promises to be a very pretty place as well as a very important one. Its wide, red roads, smooth and well-kept, are planted with trees, mangoes and palms; its bungalows are set well apart, surrounded by trees and shrubs and lawns, their red-brown roofs and verandahs toning picturesquely with the prevailing green.



0507

Curious it is when one thinks of its history to see the white painted sign-posts on which are recorded the names of the streets. There is “Kingsway” for one, and “Stewart-avenue,” after the man who deeply loved the country, for another, and there are at least two great roads that lead away to the fruitful country in the north, roads that push their way through the dense forest and must even compel the admiration of our friends the Germans, ............