But even though they went south they were not going to abandon Kumasi, which had been won at the cost of so much blood, and in that fort were left behind three white men and a company of native soldiers. All in good time the relief must come, and till then they must hold it.
A verandah hangs round the fort nowadays that the piping times of peace have come, but still upstairs in the rooms above are the platforms for the gun-carriages, and I climbed up on them and walked along the verandahs and wondered how those men must have felt who had looked out from the self-same place ten years ago. If no help came, if waiting were unduly prolonged, they would die, die like rats in a hole, and the men in their companies were dying daily. They were faithful, those dark soldiers of the Empire, but they were dying, dying of disease and hunger, and their officers could not help them, for were they not slowly dying themselves? Rumours there were of the relief force, but they were only rumours, and the spectres of disease and starvation grew daily. Could they hold out? Could they hold out? The tale has been told again and again, and will probably be told yet again in English story, and at last when they had well-nigh given up to despair they heard the sound of English guns, so different from the explosions of the long Danes, and presently there was the call of the bugles, and out into the open trotted a little fox terrier, the advance guard of the men who had come to save Kumasi.
And now the change. Kumasi has a train from the coast port of Sekondi every day, it has a population that exceeds that of the capital of the Gold Coast itself, every day the forest is receding and in the streets are growing up great buildings that mark only the beginning of a trade that is already making the wise wonder how it was when wealth lay on the ground for the picking up, England, who had it all within her grasp, was amiable enough to allow the greater portion of this wonderful land to fall to the lot of the French and Germans.
The forest used to close Kumasi in on every side. It is set in a hollow, and the tall trees and luxuriant green in the days that I have just spoken of threatened to overwhelm it. Now that sensation has passed away. Whatever Kumasi may be in the future, to-day it is a busy centre of life and trade. Where the fetish tree stood, the ground beneath its branches soaked with human blood and strewn with human bones, is now the centre of the town where the great buildings of the merchant princes of West Africa are rising. They are fine, but they are a blot on the landscape for all that. The nation that prides itself on being the colonising nation of the earth never makes any preparation for the expansion of its territory or the growth of its trade, so here in this conquered country, bought at the cost of so much sweat and blood, the authorities are allowing to go up, in the very heart of the town buildings, very handsome buildings without doubt, so close together that in a tropical land where fresh air is life itself they are preparing to take toll of the health of the unfortunates who will have to dwell and work there. But beyond that one grave mistake Kumasi promises to be a very pretty place as well as a very important one. Its wide, red roads, smooth and well-kept, are planted with trees, mangoes and palms; its bungalows are set well apart, surrounded by trees and shrubs and lawns, their red-brown roofs and verandahs toning picturesquely with the prevailing green.