What languishing heaviness of soul fills a man, as he, a mere mite in comparison, travels through the lofty and fearful forest aisle. If alone, there is an almost palpable silence, and his own heart-pulsations seem noisy. A night darkness envelops him, and, from above, but the faintest gleams of daylight can be seen. A brooding melancholy seems to rest on the face of nature, and the traveller, be he ever so prosaic, is filled with a vague indefinable sense of foreboding. The enemy lay hiding in wait, in the middle of a thorny jungle, so dense in some places that one wonders how naked men can risk their unprotected bodies. This vast jungle literally chokes the earth with its density and luxuriance. It admits every kind of shrub, plant, and flower, into a close companionship, where they intermingle each other’s luxuriant stalks, where they twine and twine each other’s long slender arms about one another, and defy the utmost power of the sun to penetrate the leafy tangle they have reared ten and fifteen feet above the dank earth. This is the bush into which the Ashantee warriors creep on all fours, and lie in wait in the gloomy recesses for the enemy. It was in such localities Sir Garnet found the Ashantees, and where he suffered such loss in his Staff and officers. Until the sonorous sounds of Danish musketry[18] suddenly awoke the echoes, few of us suspected the foe so near; until they betrayed their presence, the English might have searched in vain for the hidden enemy. Secure as they were in their unapproachable coverts, our volleys, which their loud-mouthed challenge evoked, searched many a sinister-looking bush, and in a couple of hours effectually silenced their fire. * * * * * The fighting, when it came, was stubborn. King Theodore’s warriors had shewn no such mettle as did the Ashantees, who, for five continuous days, waged fierce fight. On the first day, with the 42nd Highlanders, the Black Watch, bearing the brunt, and the whole force engaged, the battle of Amoaful was won; then three days of straggling fighting; finally, on the fifth day, with the Rifle Brigade taking its turn at the post of honour, and Lord Gifford’s Scouts always in front, the decisive battle of Ordahsu was won, and Coomassie was taken. In the Capital were found ghastly relics of wholesale slaughters, incidents of fetish-worship, which far outdid the horrors of King Theodore’s court. We are unable to realise, or are liable to forget, what Africa was before the advent of Explorers and Expeditions. The Fall of Coomassie, though attended with great loss of life, put an end to indescribable horrors and atrocities. Stanley writes:-- * * * * *