Even
when unopposed it was difficult enough to keep the carriers, who
were constantly deserting, but had they been exposed to continuous
attacks there would have been no possibility of keeping them
together.
It was then a strong argument in favor of peace that we had been
permitted to advance thirty miles into their country without a shot
being fired. Upon the other hand no messengers had been sent down
to meet us, no ambassadors had brought messages from the king. This
silence was ominous; nor were other signs wanting. At one place a
fetish, consisting of a wooden gun and several wooden daggers all
pointing towards us, was placed in the middle of the road. Several
kids had been found buried in calabashes in the path pierced through
and through with stakes; while a short distance outside Queesa the
dead body of a slave killed and mutilated but a few hours before
we entered it was hanging from a tree. Other fetishes of a more
common sort were to be met at every step, lines of worsted and
cotton stretched across the road, rags hung upon bushes, and other
negro trumperies of the same kind.
Five days later the Naval Brigade, with Wood's regiment and Rait's
battery, marched into Queesa, and the same afternoon the whole
marched forward to Fomana, the capital of Adansee, situated half a
mile only from Queesa.
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