covered with a low bush bearing a yellow
blossom, and convolvuli white, buff, and pink. The second night the
party slept at Accroful, and the next day marched through Dunquah. This
was a great store station, but the white troops were not to halt there.
It had been a large town, but the Ashantis had entirely destroyed it, as
well as every other village between the Prah and the coast. Every fruit
tree in the clearing had also been destroyed, and at Dunquah they had
even cut down a great cotton tree which was looked upon as a fetish by
the Fantis. It had taken them seven days' incessant work to overthrow
this giant of the forest.

The next halting place was Yancoomassie. When approaching Mansue the
character of the forest changed. The undergrowth disappeared and the
high trees grew thick and close. The plantain, which furnishes an
abundant supply of fruit to the natives and had sustained the Ashanti
army during its stay south of the Prah, before abundant, extended no
further. Mansue stood, like other native villages, on rising ground, but
the heavy rains which still fell every day and the deep swamps around
rendered it a most unhealthy station.

Beyond Mansue the forest was thick and gloomy. There was little
undergrowth, but a perfect wilderness of climbers clustered round the
trees, twisting in a thousand fantastic windings, and finally running
down to the ground, where they took fresh root and formed props to the
dead tree their embrace had killed. Not a flower was to be seen, but
ferns grew by the roadside in luxuriance. Butterflies were scarce, but
dragonflies darted along like sparks of fire. The road had the advantage
of being shady and cool, but the heavy rain and traffic had made it
everywhere slippery, and in many places inches deep in mud, while all
the efforts of the engineers and working parties had failed to overcome
the swamps.

It was a relief to the party when they emerged from the forests into the
little clearings where villages had once stood, for the gloom and quiet
of the great forest weighed upon the spirits. The monotonous too too of
the doves--not a slow dreamy cooing like that of the English variety,
but a sharp quick note repeated in endless succession--alone broke the
hush. The silence, the apparently never ending forest, the monotony of
rank vegetation, the absence of a breath of wind to rustle a leaf, were
most oppressive, and the feeling was not lessened by the dampness and
heaviness of the