seven officers and 214 men who had marched out
of Cape Coast; and the hospital accommodation was so bad that the men
had to lie on the wet ground with pools of water under them. The rains
were unusually severe, the camp speedily became a swamp, the troops had
worse food than usual, and, above all, were compelled to remain
inactive. The small force had no means of communication with the coast,
and no expectation of a reinforcement; and, had the enemy made an
appearance, the troops were hardly in a fit state to defend themselves.
Day after day torrents of rain fell; it was impossible to light fires
for cooking purposes except under flimsy sheds of palm branches; and
night after night officers and men turned into their wretched and
dripping tents hungry and drenched to the skin. Neither was there any
occupation for the mind or body, and universal gloom and despondency set
in. It was no unusual thing for two funerals to take place in one day,
and the unfortunate soldiers saw their small force diminishing day by
day, apparently forgotten and neglected by the rest of the world.

By a general order published at Cape Coast Castle, on the 30th of May,
1864, the garrison at Prahsu was, on account of the sickness there
prevailing, reduced to 100 men; and on the 6th of June, G Company, under
Captain Hopewell Smith, marched from the Prah and proceeded to Anamaboe,
a village on the sea-coast some thirteen miles to the east of Cape Coast
Castle. B Company still continued to suffer severely, and on the 18th of
June, 57 men were in hospital out of a total strength of 100.

At last the Imperial Government resolved to put a stop to the waste of
life that was taking place, and sent out instructions to the Colonial
Government that all operations against the Ashantis were to cease, and
the troops to be withdrawn. The welcome intelligence reached Prahsu on
the 26th of June, but the work of burying the guns and destroying the
stores and ammunition, which had been collected there at such great
labour and expense that the Government did not care to incur it again
in their removal, occupied several days, and it was not until the 12th
of July that the detachment marched out of the deadly camp on the Prah.

On the 27th of July, the hired transport _Wambojeez_ arrived at Cape
Coast Castle, to remove the detachments of the 1st and 2nd West India
Regiments to the West Indies, and on the 30th they embarked. The day
before their embarkation the follow