Major RICKETTS'S Ashantee War is altogether a melancholy affair. The
perusal of it fills the mind with images of horror and dreariness. On one hand, we have Black savages steaming with blood ; • on the other, White soldiers sickening, sinking, and dying, under the influence of a climate which, to Europeans, is neither more nor less than poison. The only relief we have is a feeling of indignation against the Government that can thus foolishly and wickedly waste the blood and treasure of England. What have we to do with castles and colonies, governors and officers, on a coast of savage Blacks, where no European can resist the pestilential effects of the climate ; and where, if he does not sink in one or two months, it is a miracle that lie should survive two years? All this is to be answered, forsooth, by the Slave Trade : first, your esta- blishments on the Guinea coast—your fatal colonies of Sierra Leone, whose very name rings like a shovelfull of earth dropped upon a coffin — and your Cape Coast Castle—do not, or do very little, diminish the Slave Trade, which is now practised in as great an extent as ever ; and next, if it did, why are we to sacrifice civilized Whites for barbarous Blacks ? Why are our soldiers and sailors to die, that black men may not sell each other? It is a. mockery to talk of humanity. Is it humane to have sacrificed Sir CHARLES AVCARTHY, General TURNER* Sir. NEIL CAMPBELL, after a life of toil and bravery, or Lieute- nant-Colonel DENHAM, and the multitudes of nameless individuals who have died under them—a few under the murderous knife of the black savage—many, a thousand times more, under the fell stroke of a climate which carries pestilence in every breeze ? The cruelties on board slave-ships are many, and the hardship of slavery is not small ; but what are these creatures at home? They come from a land where humanity is not known—where cruelty is the common manner of intercourse, and where they are all worse than slaves. Blood is as water, and it is poured out even more freely. Two or three countries have abandoned the Slave Trade, and forbidden it. What has been the consequence ? it has changed hands ; and being now conducted at greater risk, and under all sorts of privations, it is carried on at a still greater ex- pense of suffering. Instead of sending a few ships to the Guinea coast, that their crews may die, and lieutenant-governors and. other officers to succeed one another in Sierra Leone as fast as they can be appointed, the Governments who are in earnest should apply to the fountain-head at once, and compel the countries who, like Spain and Portugal, glory in the trade, to put an end to it by law, and see that the law is enforced. Major RICKETTS is the only surviving officer who has witnessed the events he describes : a few of his comrades were killed and eaten by the enemy—the rest have been swept off by the pest of the air. What sort of enemies these are—both the men and the climate—we will show by a couple of extracts. For similar details we refer to the work, where all is curiously atrocious, and the monstrous picture unredeemed by a single-point of humanity. The following extract describes the battle in which the Xing of Ashantee was defeated and his power broken: it is . the last that has taken place. "The attack commenced from right to, left, at about half-past nine o'clock. Several of the natives came insulting and abusing the centre as cowards ; which being represented-to the commanding officer, he directed them to advance about four hundredyard4 when a heavy and: effective ,fire took place. They went steadily forward amid the-work- of death,, the enemy slowly and sulkily giving war. No, prisoners were-taken. by the natives, but as they fell they Were put to death : happy were they whose 'fferings were short ; in vain the gentlemen implored them to holettheir 'hod; or- at: least to kill them outright; some were ripped up and.cut across the belly, when, plungieeetheir handaniog they took enktlut-hasilti, pouring the blood on the ground as a libation to the good fortune of the -cause : others, when they saw their own friends weltering in their blood, would give them a blow on the breast or bead, to put an end to their misery. In many instances they dragged each other from the opposite ranks and wrestled and cut one another in pieces ; and fortunate was he whose knife first found out the vital part in his foe during the deadly grapple, though perhaps in his turn to be laid low by the same means. So hard were the enemy pressed at this moment, that a captain of conse- quence blew himself up, nearly involving some of the Europeans in destruction.
" The number of the various articles taken from the enemy was very great : but as none were allowed to leave the field, and as they had no spare hands, like the people of the native chiefs, they were thrown aside, when a cry arose that the Ashantees were getting between the centre and the left, which was the fact, as one party from the Dutch town, who sup- ported the right of the Cape Coast people, had given way, and the enemy had rushed into their place. Besides this, the whole of the Danish na- tives, with their caboceers at their head, had fled early in the action, and the swallow-tailed banners of Denmark were seen safely flying in the rear. The centre were now obliged to fall back and relinquish every advantage, sustaining a galling fire in flank, and closely pressed with the mass of the enemy, who.evidently were making a bold push to seize or bring down the whites. Captain Rogers, who was advancing'with a small piece of artillery, would have been taken, had he not very promptly distinguished them as the enemy. This was the crisis of the battle; Colonel Purdon advanced with the reserve, and the rockets, a few of which thrown among the Ashantees occasioned the most dreadful havoc and confusion : the hissing sound when thrown, the train of fire, the explosion and frightful wounds they inflicted, caused them to suppose that they were thunder and lightning, called snowman in Fantee, by which name they are now known among the natives.
" Another party of Ashantees having attacked the left of king Cheboe of Dinkera, the Winnebahs fled at the first fire, nor halted till they reached .Accra ; but a few rounds of grape shot, thrown over the heads of our people, restored the battle there also, Cheboe being already in advance with part of his people driving back his opponents. On the right, the battle was not for a moment doubtful.; the king of Akimbo() drove all before him, and penetrating to the king of Ashantee's camp, took them in flank ; his path was marked by the column of smoke that rose in front, the short grass,being dry, from our forces having bivouacked at the roots of the trees for two nights, together with extreme heat, caused it to take lire ; the explosions of some. Ashantee captains, who at intervals blew themselves up in despair, which was known by the smoke that arose over the trees ; the shouts and groans of the combatants, with the burning grass, and the battle raging all around, formed no bad idea of the infer- nal regions. Fancy may indeed imagine, but it cannot describe such a scene of havoc and destruction, more resembling the wild fiction of an oriental tale than one of absolute reality. The Danish natives who had fled at nearly the first onset, now perceiving the enemy to he repulsed by the rockets and grape-shot, advanced, and taking possession of the plun- der, which was immense, deliberately walked off the field; they sent to request more ammunition, saying they had only received twenty rounds each from their own government ; and when upbraided with their bad conduct, they said it was against their fetish to fire on a Monday. About one o'clock, the heads of the Ashantee chiefs began to be brought in. Several of the blood royal and principal captains were known by the re- sidents ; when the deaths of any of them were reported to the king, he offered up human sacrifices to- their manes in the heat of the battle. Among the sad trophies of the day, was supposed to be the head of Sir Charles Mac Carthy, which was sent to England by Lieutenant-Colonel Pardon ; it was taken by the Aquapim chief. The king carried it along with him as a powerful charm ; and on the morning of the battle, he poured rum upon it, and invoked it to cause all the heads of the whites on the field to lie beside it. The skull was enveloped in paper covered with Arabic characters, and a silk handkerchief ; over all was a tiger skin, the emblem of royalty.
" The whole of the Ashantee camp was taken, together with their baggage and gold ; the amount of the latter was said to be very consider- able, but the whites never could ascertain what the natives obtained. Towards the end of the day, a great many slaves or prisoners were taken by the natives, who subsequently sold them to slave vessels to leeward of Accra, being satiated with the multitudes they had killed in the early part of the light ; and until it was dark, parties were coming in with plun- der from every quarter. The troops lay on their arms all night, as it was not known but that the king, with his surviving friends, might make an attack upon us in despair, having been seen in front, wandering over the scene of his blighted ambition. Through the night, at- intervals, some of our native allied chiefs struck their drums to some recitations, which were repeated along the line, and as they died away, had a most pleasing effect, but were generally succeeded by deep wailings and lamen. tations from the glades in front of our position, apparently from some unhappy Ashantee women looking for their friends among the fallen."
The following is a good description of the climate of Sierra Leone.
"On landing at Freetown, a stranger is not a little surprised to be- hold a place so far superior to what he had been induced to expect ; and - if he should arrive in the hermitan season, when resident Europeans are generally in better health than at other periods of the year, from its salu- brious effects, he will be saluted with an agreeable smell, similar to that of new hay, and will wonder how it was possible the place could be so unhealthy as represented; bpt on the approach of the rainy season, his -wonder begins to cease. "The hermitan isa very dry easterly wind, which, in a few-days, drys lap all vegetation, except trees; it sets in about December, and continues -at-intervals for several days together: such is the nature of the hermitan, that the flooring of the, houpes, window-shutters, and other wood work, shrink and separate more than an inch asunder ; the glass is broken, and -the furniture is warped, but at the approach of .the rains, the open seams gradually close again. "After the absence of rain for many months, the parched surface of the earth, all its vegetation, except trees, having been dried up, by the her- rnitan, and then scorched by the intense heat of a tropical sun, is slid, denly covered with verdure. The day after the first shower, the force of vegetation is so great, that the face, of nature is completely changed, and it may literally be said that the grass and weeds may be seen to grow; yet, however strange it may appear, although these, as well as the indigo plant, grow spontaneously everywhere, new land will not satisfactorily predoce the usual articles-of • consumption for three successive years; and some land will not even yield the second year,. The dry season is preceded by. dry tornadoes, which towards the latter end of miy are accompanied by-rain ; they last generally for about an hour, sometimes not solong. They very much resemblethe hurricanes in the West Indies,. but: are not • so furious ; they vary fro& south-enit to north-east. A-dark &aid in the . eastern horizon foretels the approach of a tornado ; it advances; amour., panied by tremendous thunder and vivid flashes of lightning, which at first are distant and faint, until the whole heavens gradually become oba scured by one black cloud. It frequently happens that from the-quarter opposite to that where the cloud first appears, there previously- arises a breeze, which dies away as the tornado gathers; the atmosphere then becomes very sultry, and the tornado advances, with a great rush of wind, bursts, sweeping before it (if no rain has previously fallen) im- mense clouds of dust. The wat tornadoes are succeeded by a beautifully serene sky, and the air is greatly refreshed ; the frame becomes invigo- rated, and the mind more cheerful. As the rainy season advances, the tornados gradually cease, and are succeeded by almost constant heavy rains ; at the termination of the rains, the tornadoes again make their appearance, becoming weaker as the dry season approaches, until they cease altogether.
" At intervals during the day in the rainy season, the action of an in. tensely hot sun on the earth, covered with a luxuriant vegetation, and saturated with moisture, produces a disagreeable sickening smell, which is probably one of the causes of the fever that prevails at this period of i the year, as persons recently arrived are generally taken ill in July or August ; some, however, have been known to reside in the colony above two years without having been affected by it. If they remain beyond this time, they are certain not to escape much longer ; and when at length they take the fever, it generally proves fatal to them. It is considered the more favourable symptoms for a stranger to he seized with the fever soon after his arrival. The havoc which this dreadful disease has made among the Europeans who have gone out, or have been sent to the colony, is well known. On the first arrival of European troops in 1825, they died in greater numbers than at any subsequent period; the cause was attributed much to the incomplete state of the barracks, which had been hastily erected, the materials arriving from England at the same time with the troops, the barracks could not, consequently, be covered in before the rains. From the want of accommodation on shore, most of the troops were kept on board the transports for some months. After the comple- tion of the barracks, and the walls had become dry, the troops enjoyed better health, but they drank freely, and it was very difficult to keep them sober. This no doubt tended much to bring on sickness among them ; the officers died, however, in proportion."
Major RICKETTS tells us that his work was not meant for pub- lication, and it is evident that he is not a practised writer. More- over his narrative is couched in the third person ; which gives it the stiff air of a despatch, and exposes its incorrectness in the way least to be overlooked. His matter is, however, valuable and curious ; and we are very willing to compound, in such cases, for a bald style, by a copious supply of interesting information.
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