As no idea of the coming of the English had
been entertained they passed through the dense thickets in single
file unmolested. These native paths are very difficult and unpleasant
walking. The natives always walk in single file, and the action of
their feet, aided by that of the rain, often wears the paths into
a deep V-shaped rut, two feet in depth. Burning two or three villages
by the way the column reached the coast at a spot five miles from
Elmina, having marched nine miles.
As the Ashantis were known to be in force at the villages of Akimfoo
and Ampene, four miles farther, a party was taken on to this point.
Akimfoo was occupied without resistance, but the Ashantis fought
hard in Ampene, but were driven out of the town into the bush, from
which the British force was too small to drive them, and therefore
returned to Elmina, having marched twenty-two miles, a prodigious
journey in such a climate for heavily armed Europeans. The effect
produced among the Ashantis by the day's fighting was immense. All
their theories that the white men could not fight in the bush were
roughly upset, and they found that his superiority was as great
there as it had been in the open.
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