3-065-558 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The War on the Gold Coast: Ashantees in ambush, 1874. 'The latest news from Cape Coast Castle is to Dec. 15, when Sir Garnet Wolseley, with 500 [British] sailors and marines, had gone up the country, seventy miles towards the river Prah, in pursuit of the Ashantees...Our Illustration on the front page of this paper is a lively representation of the native manner of fighting in the bush or forest. The men are naked, with the exception of a cloth bound over the lower part of the body, from the waist to the thigh; and their nimble movements, under cover of thick underwood, demand the utmost vigilance on the part of our officers to prevent a surprise while on the march. Their weapons are clumsy flint muskets, loaded with slugs, or sometimes with pebbles, and the wounds they inflict are not always mortal'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.