Gold Coast’s Colonial Years

hortly before the introduction of Gold Coast’s first adhesive stamps in 1875, a February, 1874 report in the brought readers news of the Ashanti War in distant West Africa. It included a paragraph headed ‘DIFFICULTIES WITH BEARERS’, which quoted from a letter dated 10 January 1874 carried to Liverpool by the troop ship . ‘The correspondent reported that fevers and vomiting have broken out among British regiments marching towards the front line. No deaths had been reported so far; but their greatest difficulty arises from lack of reliable porters among the Fantee tribesmen from Sierra Leone,