St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1896-01-27
A VERY FUNNY WAR
GREAT BRITAIN HAD A REGULAR
PICNIC WITH AN --RICAN
CHIEF.
KING PREMPEH'S SOLDIERS
FRIGHTENED OUT OF THEIR WITS
WITH FIREWORKS AND
WRESTLING ROCKETS.
THE DEVIL HIMSELF LOOSE.
At Least, the Barbarians Thought
He Was, Which Amounted to
the Same Thing.
KING PREMPEH'S SOLDIERS
THE DEVIL HIMSELF LOOSE.


ern times has just closed. The fero-
cious barbarian King of Ashantee has
surrendered to the British expedition.
The funniest part of it all is the way
the English troops frightened the
brave African monarch and his war
riors almost to death without even fir
ing a gun.
The path from the coast to the in
terror led through a dense African jun
CLEAN ideal place for an ambush. The
army engineers went ahead of the
troops with a corps of wood-choppers
to clear the way for the army AS the
expedition approached the kingdom of
the brave King Prempeh they found
the woods full of armed savages.
Suddenly the engineering corps, after
darkness had settled on the forest, set
off an enormous display of sky-rockets,
Roman candles. aerial bombs, pin
wheels and fire-crackers They sent
the rockets whizzing into the under
brush and exploded the many-colored
bombs among the trees. Red, blue and
yellow lights glowed here and there.
and Roman candles shot their ex-
pioding balls up over the heads of King
Prempeh's ambushed braves.
The warriors were astounded Their
eyes bulged with terror and in five
minutes there wasn't corporars guard
of the valiant army to be seen. The
fireworks were kept up all night and
at daybreak a courier from King Prem
peh crept up to the British picket lines
and begged to announce that the king
was ready to agree to anything the
English commander wanted.
England has been quietly pushing
her conquest of Ashantee, while the at
tention of the world was directed to
another part of Africa. Thus a British
tentacle in the form Of an army OF
conquest has stretched out from the
great central octopus, and another
Kingdom is to be quietly added to the
British possessions.
The English propose to "delimit the
boundary" Of Ashantee by absorbing
such of it as possesses gold fields, Just
as the Schomburgk line moved around
In mysterious manner in Venezuela
until stopped by the United States
government. The purpose of the pres
ent campaign against the king Of Ash
antee, as the English allege, is to stop
the inhuman sacrifices of that funny
monarch. AS was recently described
In these columns, King Prempeh has
been maintaining private slaughter
yard for his enemies. He has 3.33e
wives and he orders peoples heads
cut Off whenever it suits his whim
This, 1t is true, had been going on fol
a good many years without the British
desiring to put stop to it, until gold
was discovered within Ashantee's Dor
ders
AS soon as the presence of the gold
was known the offenses of this inhu-
man monster cried to heaven for VEN
geance.
Clergymen all over England were
shocked and Mortified as they read of
the human sacrifices going on in the
neighborhoodo Coomassie, and as
rumors of the new gold fields were cir
culated strong desire sprang up for
advancing civilization in that neigh
borhood
The consequence is that the Door,
downtrodden negro is again to be
saved" Such of the natives of Ash
antee as have gold nuggets to dispose
of will be offered copies of the Bible,
which sell in London at one and six
pence.
Nowhere in the history of war, per-
haps, is there record of a campaign so
remarkable as this for the methods by
Which it has been conducted. For once
the English have shown great military
intelligence in a foreign campaign.
Perhaps the reason for this is that
they went to Coomassie once before,
and that the present commander-in-
chief of the British army is the gentle
man who led that expedition Lord
Wolseley knew what was before the
troops.
He knew that a large army of inva-
sion would be a useless incumbrance,
and the ordinary British methods
would be wholly out of place in Ash
antee. He also knew that the follow
ers of King Prempeh were up to date
so far as firearms were concerned, but
that their knowledge of science was
somewhat deficient. The Ashantee war
rlor will fight when you place a rife in
bis hands, but when you confront him
with q kaleidoscope, a magic lantern or
a penfly-in-the-slot machine he goes all
to pieces.
The way this war has been carried
out is the funniest part about the whole
operabouffe performance. Little or
nothing has been said about it in the
English newspapers. These publica-
lions took the expedition seriously and
published lengthy detailed accounts of
the preparations as if they were direct
ed against a real military power.
The steamer Angola left Liverpool
and arrived at Cape Coast Castle early
in December with the first detachment
Of the expedition. Hidden away down
in her hold was an immense quantity
Of sky rockets and Roman candles
She had tons of these Fourth of July
fireworks among her cargo of warlike
implements. There were skyrockets of
every kind, fire balloons, shooting stars,
red, white and blue powders, pinwheels.
Snakes" and Chinese firecrackers
Another ship followed the Angola
similarly loaded and containing no
rifles or cartridges whatever This
ship bore to the Gold coast simply an
enormous consignment of fireworks.
Long wooden boxes that looked as If
they contained rifles with which to
shoot down the warlike Ashantee real
ly had within them harmless skyrock-
cts with patent tails that made fiery
streamers of sparks through the AZ
rican jungle, and exploded in gorgeous
clusters of stars of every hue. Some of
these skyrockets released strings of
red balloons of fire to float serenely
over tha danca AcboDtaa forocfc