hose loyalty to their Queen, and whose soldierlike
qualities, have been so well proved in the war now happily at an
end."

The rains having set in at the Prah, and much sickness prevailing, it
was decided to relieve the posts between that river and the coast. In
fact, the mortality that had occurred at Prahsu in 1864 showed that
West India troops should not be encamped there without urgent necessity;
and no such necessity now existed, as the King of Ashanti had agreed to
the treaty, which had been left unsettled up to Sir Garnet Wolseley's
departure. Captain J.A. Smith, with fifty men of the regiment, escorted
the Ashanti chiefs sent down by the king, and arrived at Cape Coast on
the 12th of March. On the 18th, H Company marched in from Prahsu, and
embarked on the 20th for Sierra Leone in the transport _Nebraska_, which
vessel also conveyed the 2nd West India Regiment to the West Indies. C
Company was the last withdrawn from the Prah, arriving at Cape Coast on
April 2nd.

It had been most disappointing to the two West India regiments to have
been prevented from entering Coomassie, within some twenty-five miles
from which their head-quarters were halted. West India regiments rarely
have opportunities of seeing active service elsewhere than on the West
Coast of Africa; and, although the duties assigned to them in the second
phase of the war were most important, holding, as they did, the detached
posts from the Prah up to the front, keeping open the communications,
protecting the convoys, sick and wounded, and constantly furnishing
patrols and escorts, yet they felt it rather hard to have been deprived,
in their solitary field for distinguishing themselves, of the honours of
fighting beside their European comrades at Amoaful and Ordahsu.

On the return of the regiment from the bush, the fatigues and exposures
of the campaign began to have their effect upon both officers and men.
In ordinary years, in times of peace, Europeans who are seasoned to
tropical service, can serve for twelve months in the deadly climate of
West Africa without suffering much loss; but any unusual exposure or
hardship is at once followed by an alarming increase of sickness. The
1st West India Regiment was the only corps which, after enduring all the
fatigues of a campaign in the most deadly climate in the world, did not
enjoy the advantage of a change to a healthier station. Added to this,
the season proved to be unusually unhealthy, and t