e way.

The English now turned off towards the coast, marching part of the
way through open country, part through a bush so dense that it was
impossible to make a flank attack upon them here. In such cases as this,
when the Ashantis know that an enemy is going to approach through a
dense and impassable forest, they cut paths through it parallel to that
by which he must advance and at a few yards' distance. Then, lying in
ambush there, they suddenly open fire upon him as he comes along. As
no idea of the coming of the English had been entertained they passed
through the dense thickets in single file unmolested. These native paths
are very difficult and unpleasant walking. The natives always walk in
single file, and the action of their feet, aided by that of the rain,
often wears the paths into a deep V-shaped rut, two feet in depth.
Burning two or three villages by the way the column reached the coast at
a spot five miles from Elmina, having marched nine miles.

As the Ashantis were known to be in force at the villages of Akimfoo and
Ampene, four miles farther, a party was taken on to this point. Akimfoo
was occupied without resistance, but the Ashantis fought hard in Ampene,
but were driven out of the town into the bush, from which the British
force was too small to drive them, and therefore returned to Elmina,
having marched twenty-two miles, a prodigious journey in such a climate
for heavily armed Europeans. The effect produced among the Ashantis by
the day's fighting was immense. All their theories that the white men
could not fight in the bush were roughly upset, and they found that his
superiority was as great there as it had been in the open. His heavy
bullets, even at the distance of some hundred yards, crashed through the
brush wood with deadly effect, while the slugs of the Ashantis would not
penetrate at a distance much exceeding fifty yards.

Ammon Quatia was profoundly depressed in spirits that evening.

"The white men who come to fight us," he said, "are not like those who
come to trade. Who ever heard of their making long marches? Why, if they
go the shortest distances they are carried in hammocks. These men march
as well as my warriors. They have guns which shoot ten times as far
as ours, and never stop firing. They carry cannon with them, and have
things which fly through the air and scream, and set villages on fire
and kill men. I have never heard of such things before. What do you call
them?"

"Th