he creature
of imagination in the opposite extreme, evoked by the vivid fancy of
Mrs. Beecher Stowe.

The bravery of the West India soldier in action has often been tested,
and as long as an officer remains alive to lead not a man will flinch.
His favourite weapon is the bayonet; and the principal difficulty with
him in action is to hold him back, so anxious is he to close with his
enemy. It is unnecessary here to refer to individual acts of gallantry
performed by soldiers of the 1st West India Regiment, they being fully
set forth in the following history; but of such performed by soldiers of
other West India regiments the two following now occur to me.

Private Samuel Hodge, a pioneer of the 3rd West India Regiment, was
awarded the Victoria Cross for conspicuous bravery at the storming of
the Mohammedan stockade at Tubarcolong (the White Man's Well), on the
River Gambia, on the 30th of May, 1866. Under a heavy fire from the
concealed enemy, by which one officer was killed and an officer and
thirteen men severely wounded, Hodge, and another pioneer named Boswell,
chopped and tore away with their hands the logs of wood forming the
stockade, Boswell falling nobly just as an opening was effected. Again,
in 1873, during the Ashanti War--when it was reported, on the 5th of
December, by natives at Yancoomassie Assin that the Ashanti army had
retired across the Prah--two soldiers of the 2nd West India Regiment
volunteered to go on alone to the river and ascertain if the report were
true. On their return they reported all clear to the Prah; and said they
had written their names on a piece of paper and posted it up. Six days
later, when the advanced party of the expeditionary force marched into
Prahsu, this paper was found fastened to a tree on the banks of the
river. At the time that this voluntary act was performed it must be
remembered that, on the 27th of November, the British and their allies
had met with a serious repulse at Faisowah, through pressing too closely
upon the retiring Ashantis; that this repulse was considered both by the
Ashantis and by our native allies as a set-off against the failure of
the attack on Abracampa; that the Houssa levy was in a state of panic,
and no reliable information as to the position of the enemy was
obtainable. It was under such circumstances that these two men advanced
nearly sixteen miles into an (to them) unknown tract of solitary
forest, to follow up an enemy that never spared life