3-065-717 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Ashantee War: interior of Adansi chief's palace, Fomannah: English officers selecting quarters, 1874. Third Anglo-Ashanti War. The British Army in West Africa. 'The military gentlemen of this expedition have had to put up with such lodgings as they could get on the road through the forest between Cape Coast Castle and Coomassie. But after they crossed the Prah and traversed the Assin territory to enter that of the Ashantees, a decided improvement was found in the native buildings available for their temporary use. The palace of the Adansi Hills Chief, or King, at Fomanna, which was occupied by Sir Garnet Wolseley and his staff, gives a favourable notion of the merits of Ashantee architecture. The floor is painted with a coating of clay, in colour a deep rich Etruscan red, with a beautiful polish. The walls are washed with white clay...[and] decorated with strange and rather tasteful designs. We cannot say much about the furniture, as the people of Fomanna took away their valuables with them. But they left many stools, curved in the seat, and with the legs handsomely carved; some rudely-made tables, clay pots, and calabashes. These, with some old pipe-heads, stone tools, and musical instruments, were all the booty obtained in Fomanna'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.