3-065-595 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches of the Ashantee War: women leaving Cape Coast Castle with provisions for the troops, 1874. 'The native townsfolk of the lower class, who are Fantees...are chocolate-coloured, and not ill-shaped. [The] women do all the hard work, and the gangs of female baggage-porters hired to carry provisions to the front for the use of our troops are shown in...the present Illustration...They are paid a shilling a day for the work, and sixpence a day for their subsistence while so employed. The scene at the castle about eight o'clock in the morning, when as many as 400 receive their loads and their sixpenny allowance to start for the day's journey, is one of great bustle; and the women crowd upon each other so that it is difficult to keep them in order. They pass in succession through an arched gateway of the castle quadrangle, each woman bearing upon her head a 50-lb. tin case of Australian preserved meat, or rice, or biscuits, which she will convey a distance of twenty miles in the course of the day. Some of them go no farther than this first stage of the road, but return next day to Cape Coast Castle, and are then prepared for another job; others perform four stages, day after day, thereby transporting the stores a length of eighty miles'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.