The Danes and Swedes on account of the slave trade had established forts on the Gold Coast in the 17th and 18th centuries, respectively, to supply the West Indian islands with slaves. The Swedes soon abandoned their trading forts, but Denmark still retained four down to the middle of the 19th century, all of which she then sold to England in 1850 for £10,000. For the same modest payment Denmark transferred to England the protectorate over a considerable area to the east of the Gold Coast Colony, along the river Volta. The Dutch during the 17th and 18th centuries had planted forts on the Gold Coast in rivalry with the English, and in most cases alongside of them. After the abolition of the slave trade Holland lost interest in her West African possessions. Their existence was very awkward to the English, as it prevented the collection of customs duties. In 1868 a partition of the coast was negotiated between England and Holland, the Dutch taking over all the forts west of a certain line, and the English those which lay to the east of this boundary. In this manner the English acquired at last the whole of the town of Accra, which is now the capital of the Gold Coast. In 1871-2 the Dutch agreed to abandon to the English all their remaining possessions on the Gold Coast in return for the cession of certain British claims over Sumatra. Unfortunately, the transfer of territory from the Dutch entailed a quarrel with the powerful negro kingdom of Ashanti, situated behind the coast tribes of this region but striving always to reach the sea. The Ashanti kingdom was rather a confederacy of small negro states, with the King of Kumasi at its head, than a homogeneous monarchy. In 1872 this paramount King of Kumasi despatched an army of 40,000 men to invade the British Protectorate and assert his claim to domination over the Fanti tribes of the colony. A large force of Fantis was to some extent armed and organized by the British Government, but the Ashantis defeated them twice with great slaughter, and then attacked the British fort of Elmina, where the Ashanti army sustained such a serious repulse that it avoided any further attacks on British fortified settlements. A year afterwards, Sir John Glover (as he subsequently became) marched with Hausa levies to attack the Ashanti from the east, while Sir Garnet Wolseley[115], arriving in the winter of 1873 with a strong expedition composed of British soldiers, contingents of the West Indian regiments, British seamen, and marines, drove the enemy back into their country, reached the capital, Kumasi, and captured and burned that place. A somewhat dubious peace was arrived at, the king never afterwards fulfilling the terms of the treaty, which he was supposed to have signed with a pencil cross; and for the following twenty-one years British