My soldier-servant, Private Rawson, begged leave to be allowed to go with me, but the Secretary of State refused his permission in a letter the wording of which, considering that 25 officers were embarking, is peculiar: “Mr. Secretary Cardwell considers that the climate is particularly fatal to the constitutions of Europeans.” On receipt of this quaintly worded refusal, I wrote to the Army Purchase Commissioners--I having been a Purchase officer up to the rank of Major--to ask what I was worth that day, in other words, how much the country would give me if I retired, and received for answer the sum of £4500. I had declined to join in the petition to Mr. Cardwell, which was originated and put forward by two of my friends who are still happily alive. One of them, however, having been an Artilleryman, had paid nothing for his steps. The claim in the petition to have the purchase-money returned at once was not only illogical, but if granted would have been grossly unfair; for if A had purchased over B, B would undoubtedly have resented A getting his money back and retaining the seniority that he had purchased with the money. It was stated, and I believe with accuracy, that if the petitioners had confined their request to the Secretary of State that the money should be payable to their heirs on their decease, Mr. Cardwell would have supported the application. But as the matter stood, on accepting promotion to the rank of General, I, like my brother Purchase officers, helped the Consolidated Fund of the Nation. CHAPTER XXII 1873--ASHANTI Elmina--Ex-Governors’ wives--Essaman, the first successful Bush fight--The head of the road--Kossoos’ cruelty--A Fanti order of battle. The steamer in which Sir Garnet and his Staff left Liverpool on the 12th had been newly painted, which added to our discomfort. She rolled so heavily as to throw a watch out of the waistcoat pocket of one of the Staff overboard as he leant over the ship’s side, and on more than one occasion we thought she had turned turtle as we were all tossed out of our berths. We reached Cape Coast Castle on the morning of the 2nd October. I was sent to Elmina, a Dutch fort, about 12 miles off, to the west of the chief village[113] of the settlement. There were six officers in the Fort, of whom three had fever, and the other two startled us by the offer of “Square-face”[114] instead of five-o’clock tea, and one of them still more so by drinking the glass poured out for but declined by Arthur Eyre, after he had drunk his own. It was, perhaps, more remarkable that they were alive than that they were not well, but the climate at that season was, it must be admitted, intensely depressing.