IN ASHANTI BUSH AND MALAY JUNGLE. It is a big leap from Maoriland to West Africa, but it is there, to Ashanti, that we must go to see how the next Crosses on the roll were won. Ashanti, as the map shows, is in the Upper Guinea district, immediately inland of the Gold Coast. Seventy thousand square miles in extent, it is thickly covered with forests of mahogany, ebony, and other valuable hardwood trees, except where it is given up to vast mangrove swamps that are no good to anybody. Its people are pure negroes, thick-lipped, flat-nosed, with woolly hair and projecting jaws. They are a savage, cruel race, fetish-worshippers like most of the tribes in West Africa, who have been notorious for the revolting form of their religious rites. Until the custom of making human sacrifices was put down with a strong hand by Great Britain, Coomassie, the capital, was as much a City of Blood as was the ill-famed Benin, a very different place from the town of to-day, with its wide, regular streets and stuccoed houses painted red and white. With this country of Ashanti we have come repeatedly into conflict from the early days of last century, when trading stations became established on the coast. The Dutch, too, found their way thither with the same object in view, and out of the rivalry between them and us trouble arose that came to a head in 1872. In that year the Dutch traders who had established themselves on the Gold Coast were bought out by us, their possessions being transferred to this country in return for some land concessions in the island of Sumatra. To this arrangement King Coffee of Ashanti took exception, as he lost thereby certain annual tributes which the Dutch had hitherto paid him, and by way of showing his resentment he carried off several missionaries and attacked our allies the Fantis. It was necessary to bring King Coffee and his turbulent subjects to reason, so in September 1873 Sir Garnet Wolseley was sent out to Ashanti with an expedition. The task was no easy one, for before Coomassie was reached the troops had to fight their way through the bush, and the African bush is not to be treated lightly, with its tangled masses of vegetation, dark belts of forest, rivers and morasses. Moreover, the campaign had to be completed before the hot season came on, when the terrors of pestilence and fever would have to be faced. That Sir Garnet Wolseley did accomplish the task set him is a matter of history. By February of the following year King Coffee was forced to make peace, one of the terms being that he should discontinue human sacrifices.