AKIM-FOO.*
WE are glad that Major Butler takes up the narrative of his event- ful life,—which his two preceeding works had brought to the mo- ment at which he learned, being then in America, thatthe English expedition to Ashanti was being organised, under the command of his old friend and comrade Sir Garnet Wolseley, and determined to join it,—with his parting from Cerf Vola. Even now, we do .Atint.Foo: the History of a Failure. By Major W. F. Butler, C.B , F.B G.S. London: Sampson Low, Son, and Co. naknow why he did not bring the dog to England, though he satisfactorily explains that Cerf Vola, having no power to change his woolly coat, his bushy tail, and his immense neck-muffler of soft fur and long hair, could not have borne the African climate. The last days of the close companionship of the dog and the man had some amusing incidents in them, in spite of their sadness, especially as Cerf Vola's progress through the States by coach and boat, road and rail, was "attended with some slight misapprehension on the part of the citizens regarding his exact species." "On the shores of Puget Sound," says the author, " in Washington Territory, a group of small boys imagined that they beheld a Cinnamon bear, and regarding me in the light of the chain-and-collar man, had the temerity to inquire, What time is the show to begin, Mister ?" On another occasion, an old lady travelling in a stage- coach (in which the Untiring, having been rated and charged as a first-class passenger, was also travelling as such), ejaculated, " Laux ! look at that 'ere 'coon !" It was hard to part with him ; we wonder that he had not a suspicion of his master's treacherous design, being such a marvel of intelligence, even for a dog, and we are not sure that Major Butler is right when he says :—" In these things animals have perhaps the advantage of us ; they don't know what is about to take place. They look at us almost to the last as though life VMS always to be the same." Almost!— well, perhaps so ; but how keen their suspicion of evil when it is roused, and how pathetic their grief ! Here is the short story of the close of the old companionship :- " When the moment of departure arrived, he had to be secured with• chain and collar. A collar had long been an accustomed burthen to him, but hitherto it had been used to draw me along with him, now it was to keep us asunder. When he found that he was to be tied, he- howled with that peculiar moan which only his breed and the wild wolves of the North can send through the pine-woods. Old dog, good- bye! One does not waste much time over these things, but perhaps the good-byes that are said short, or are not said at all in spoken words,. are the ones given to the hardest parting—their echo is within, and their memory lingers long. He stopped the howl ; there was a strain. at the chain that would not break, a tug at the collar that would not draw or haul, and the long fellowship was ended. Then, as we drove away to the port where the steamer lay in the moonlight, the old dog stopped his moan, as dogs in mental pain sometimes do, to listen,—to. listen in the vain hope that the sound of footstep or of hoof-beat may be returning instead of going 'away ; and then, on the night air, the- howl rose louder than before, until the link of sound was lost in distance."
His after-experience of the men among whom his mission took him was not likely to lessen Major Butler's sense of Cerf Vola's qualities, or to mitigate his grief for his absence. A more humiliating record of human worthlessness and degradation than this story of the African tribes whom our little army went to help, but who, with shameless cowardice, declined to help them- selves, has probably never been written, and it requires the• strong sympathy with which the author's energetic performance of his vexatious duty inspires us, and the uncommon beauty and attraction of his style, to make us follow the repulsive record of monotonous rascality to the end. These suffice, however, to rivet the reader's attention to the best book for which we are indebted to the Ashanti Expedition ; one which displays the remarkable qualities of its predecessors, the Great Lone Land and the Wild North Land, under essentially different conditions—alike only in the loneliness of the journey in a strange land—and evinces a mastery of literary method much beyond the standard of those works. Major Butler writes with true soldierly directness when he is dealing with the facts of his mission and the military aspects of the campaign ; but he is always so much more than a soldier, he is so close an observer, so imaginative, poetical, picturesque, and humorous, so frankly affectionate and enthusiastic in his friendships ; he is happily possessed of so fresh and original a manner and turn of expression, that his book stands apart from the category of war literature, a completely separate achievement. He tells the story of his own deeds and endurance, and the interest is then personal, yet there is none of that egotism in his pages which in the case of some special correspondents on this same occasion made one feel inclined to throw their books down, and to ask of the circumambient air, apt to be charged with the impatient utterances of reviewers, whether these gentlemen were 'sent to Ashanti that they might tell us about themselves. Major Butler invests everything he sees, and all the wild- ness of the African country—so different from the Northern wildness, which he has made familiar to us—with a certain fanci- fulness and pictorial effect, and in all there is an air of musing, of contemplation, and an innate refinement, difficult to indicate precisely, but of which all his readers must be sensible. He is one of the few writers who can infuse humour into the treatment of a serious subject without the least touch of discordant levity, who can be atern without heartlessness, and strong without coarseness. The charm of his humaneness- is on all he writes ; the unaffected earnestness of his character mingles with a simple and manly. sweetness, which comes uppermost every now and then, like the minor chords in old Irish music, and touches us, as they do, when we hear them, with swift emotion. He never sees anything in a common-place aspect—which does not mean that he is not thoroughly practical—and so he never records anything in a common-place manner. The voyage from New York to Liverpool turns to sparkling fun under his pen, and in the story of his second voyage, from Liverpool to the West Coast of Africa, we find capital sketches of character, and this beautiful description of Madeira, seen from the ship :—
"Out of the blue waves a great mountain mass rears its peaks to the skies. The ocean which laves, the rocks of Madeira is well fitted to form the setting to such a gem ; it sends its coolest, freshest, softest breezes to fan the rugged brow of the lofty mountain ; it gathers up showers so gentle, that they seem like wreaths of feathery gauze around the lair hillsides of the beautiful island ; a thousand varied tints stream through those floating showers from the brilliant sun above, and fall in shafts of many-coloured light on Ruivo's scarped sides and Maehico's glistening rivulets. Groves of green nestle in valleys where once the earthquake rumbled, and the fire-torrent ran downward to the sea; colours, bright and vivid, soft and refreshing to the eye, lie spread along the slope which rises from the ocean ; white villas with dark-brown roofs peep out from groves of laurel and palm ; and over all, the grim peaks of Ruivo and Machico, and the Arrierro, come and go through the rifts of vapour which float lazily around their stupendous precipices. Across the giant fissures in the upper mountain the rainbow has thrown bridges of light, and at times one sees beneath the brilliant arches the silvery threads of mountain rivulets, as they flash over some lofty pre- cipice, or fall in foam down the steep ravines, as they hurry to the -ocean with the message of the sky."
Major Butler does not like Africa or the Africans; all his descrip- tions are gloomy and grim, and his first impression is of " a coast of glaring sand, on which no vestige of life is visible, a slanting chore lashed by a furious surf ; the grim desert on which no rain- drop falls, no streamlet flows, and a sea upon whose lonely waters scarce ever a sail is seen." Yet he makes the hideousness which he describes fascinating, by the intensity with which he conveys its effect upon his own mind, by the power with which he makes us comprehend the white man's terrible need of all his resources in courage and endurance in a country, "half- rainless desert, half-feverish swamp, and tropic forest ; its rivers teeming with monstrous reptiles ; its forests filled with un- couth beasts ; malaria and poisonous vapour ever rising from its myriad marshes ; and its coasts and mountains fanned by wither- ing breezes which carry death on their noxious wings." He gives a beautifully-written chapter to the history of exploration in Africa and the slave, question, and draws a brilliant picture of the barbaric ascendancy acquired by the Ashanti-foo, and the posi- tion of the "kingdom" when our expedition arrived at the Prah. Before he enters on the history of his "failure," which we have to thank for the most picturesque and amusing description of a strange country and a savage people within our knowledge, Major Butler has much to say about his beloved General, Sir Garnet Wolseley, and he says it with manly enthusiasm and affectionateness which are touching and delightful. His countryman and chief is his hero of romance and reality, the centre of his former memories and old asso- ciations : the romantic, poetical nature of the one man finds food for itself in the rapid, dashing career of the other, and even loves to dwell upon the points of contrast in their respective destinies, on the favouring influences which have always hindered Wolseley from being "too late" and preserved him from "failure." With- out a touch of discontent, without a hint of wounded vanity, and with a peculiar charm of simplicity only to be felt, not described, Major Butler dwells on the contrast and the circumstances, and on the former career of his chief, in a manner which can hardly fail to make the two friends interesting to the public in other than a general sense.
The General sent for Major Butler on 1st November, 1873, and gave him his directions. " There is the kingdom of Akim," he said, indicating it on the map, "seven or eight days' march -from the coast at Accra. There is a king there named Cobina Fuah, and another king or chief named Coffee Ahencora ; they are said to be better than these cowardly fellows here. Their people-are said to be old, foes of the Ashantis. Go to them, try and get them to move on the Prah, and do something to molest the Ashantis as they recross that river. A steamer will take you- to Acera ; from thence you will travel inland to Akim. Take with you what you require ; bring twenty, scouts as an escort. You know what I want done."
He knew, and he went to do it, but without sanguine expecta- tion of success, so that though there was vexation, there was net. much disappointment in his failure ; but the history of the vain attempt to induce or force the Akim-foo to do anything except cheat, cringe, and run away is as heartbreaking a tale as ever a soldier- and emissary has had to tell. On the well-known result and outline of that difficult, dangerous, and strenuous effortwe need not dwell ; the gallant service which Major Butler rendered has been recognised by his chief and his country ; our concern is with the story in its literary, aspect, and as a remarkable contribution to our imperfect knowledge of people with whom we are likely to have more to do in future than is altogether pleasant or profitable to anticipate. In the former sense, Akin-Foo is of the highest interest, and deserves to be placed in the first rank of works of travel and adventure. In the latter sense, it is important, ludicrous, repulsive, and disheartening ; and it tempts the reader to a hasty generalisation, in fact, to think that as the tribes which are in danger of being gobbled up by King Coffee or his successors are the cowardly and abject wretches who cheated, deceived, and nearly drove Major Butler to distraction, under such circumstances as the then existing campaign for their benefit, the
sooner they are gobbled up, and only the fittest among the savages survive, the better.
What a weary march that must have been, if not quite from the- start, certainly from the first experience of a black king's valour and trustworthiness ! But how very funny, too, and how delightfully told, with Major Butler's sense of humour constantly overcoming his exasperation, and leading him to put all the points of his discomfiture in the drollest light. How he harangues Quabina Fuah, and fires off rifles and "American fourteen-shooters" to tempt and encourage him, but only frightens him dreadfully ; how he declares that if Quabina will but come with him, he shall be a great king, and " his name will be told to the Queen of England as that of a brave man," whereas if he does not come, " his name will be the name of a woman." (This is hard, the women are much less cowardly than the men.) And how funny is the con- clusion of this incident, which indeed afforded a precedent only too accurately followed by all the chiefs to whom Major Butler addressed his vain appeals :--
"Alas for the eloquence which anger had given me! Again the brute begged my pardon, and the Queen's pardon, and the pardon of the General at Cape Coast; but he must go to Accra to eat 'fetish,'—yes, he must go, if there was only one old woman in the whole town."
Early in his journey, the horrid African fever laid its grip on Major Butler, and struck him down, on the dreadful monotonous track, where "the great trees seem endless pillars on an endless road," and he had to be carried into the forest, with its awful gloom, and night-canopy of dense white fog, there to "pull through" as best he could. His description of the forest is very fine and terrible,—totally different from the beautiful pictures of the forests of the North, of South America, and the Brazils,
which have kindled every imagination,—sombre, hopeless, and hideous. It ends thus :—
" This forest of Akim and Ashanti is the only forest I have ever saon which defies man ; you could not clear it, for the reason that long before you could cut it down another would have arisen. So vast is this vegetable kingdom, that the animal world sickens and dies out before it; this immense forest holds scarcely a living creature. For months I have trodden its labyrinths, and seen only a diminutive deer, a grey monkey, and a few serpents."
Many horrid stories of African cruelty, folly, and superstition find place in Major Butler's pages, and his estimate of the natives' character is always low and unhopeful, but he manages to make them excessively amusing, and to individualise them in a way to which we are quite unaccustomed. The book is so various that it has something to offer to every taste, and the reader will find that he must not miss a page, or he will also miss a point.
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