Ashanti War, Ghana, 1874: wounded British soldiers at Cape Coast, Ghana, lying on litters, being loaded on to boats for transport to hospital ships. Wood engraving after Melton Prior.

"The subject of our Extra Supplement large engraving has a painful interest, connected with this West African campaign. It is the embarkation, at Cape Coast Castle, of a number of invalid British officers and soldiers for the voyage home, or to Madeira, or some other place of sanitary treatment. The health of the English troops and sailors employed on the Gold Coast has indeed, up to this time, suffered less from its pestilential climate than was expected, and if they can get away before March the mortality will scarcely have exceeded its usual rate in a campaign elsewhere. But several young officers of high social and professional distinction have been among the earliest victims, and the friends of many others will anxiously expect their return, as we hope, in a vigorous condition, to tell the short but stirring tale of the Ashantee war."--Illustrated London news, op. cit., p. 177. Cape Coast Castle is shown in the background