The SS Furnessia had reached New York on schedule and Mary is now back with her family. I boarded the train at six-thirty this morning and in front of me lies the tedious three day train journey to San Francisco. My fellow passengers are mainly men from the services transiting between duties, and businessmen chasing the opportunities that foreign conflicts always bring to the fore. There is also a strong contingent of fellow press, and I was pleased to see amongst them my friend Bennet Burleigh from the Daily Telegraph.
We paid the conductor what seemed like an exorbitant amount to find seats for us together; but this was a mere pittance, in fact, for turning the trip from what would otherwise have been mind-numbing monotony to the excitement of speculation and anticipation about our imminent foray into the lands of the Qing dynasty, and reminiscences of our time spent in East Africa.
Other than a general understanding that they were an anti-Christian, anti-foreign peasant movement, related to the secret societies that had flourished in China for centuries, we knew little of the Boxers. What was clear, though, from the reports of Morrison, from the Times, was that the fate of those trapped in the foreign legations of Peking was in the balance, and that occurrences of murder and atrocity featured routinely in the Boxer campaign. This immediately brought to mind the analogous situation that we had experienced some four years earlier with the Ashanti expedition to relieve Kumassi from the brutal oppression of Prempeh. The similarities were almost eerie: a long and difficult journey to a foreign port of arrival; a forced march with enemy attack a constant threat; power-crazed military leaders bereft of any moral compass; and the sacrifice of innocent lives the ultimate cost of failure.
It would be some time before we reached China and we could, of course, only wonder what we would find and what fate awaited us. I can not recall that we ever discussed our fears openly but I am certain that both of us prayed that we would not have to re-live the horrors that had haunted us since Kumassi ...
We paid the conductor what seemed like an exorbitant amount to find seats for us together; but this was a mere pittance, in fact, for turning the trip from what would otherwise have been mind-numbing monotony to the excitement of speculation and anticipation about our imminent foray into the lands of the Qing dynasty, and reminiscences of our time spent in East Africa.
Other than a general understanding that they were an anti-Christian, anti-foreign peasant movement, related to the secret societies that had flourished in China for centuries, we knew little of the Boxers. What was clear, though, from the reports of Morrison, from the Times, was that the fate of those trapped in the foreign legations of Peking was in the balance, and that occurrences of murder and atrocity featured routinely in the Boxer campaign. This immediately brought to mind the analogous situation that we had experienced some four years earlier with the Ashanti expedition to relieve Kumassi from the brutal oppression of Prempeh. The similarities were almost eerie: a long and difficult journey to a foreign port of arrival; a forced march with enemy attack a constant threat; power-crazed military leaders bereft of any moral compass; and the sacrifice of innocent lives the ultimate cost of failure.
It would be some time before we reached China and we could, of course, only wonder what we would find and what fate awaited us. I can not recall that we ever discussed our fears openly but I am certain that both of us prayed that we would not have to re-live the horrors that had haunted us since Kumassi ...
Ashanti Leader Kumassi - 1896 |
Boxer Leader Peking - 1900 |
Read the full sory of: The Killing Fields of Kumassi - (pdf: 852 Kb)
or the individual chapters of: To Kumassi with Scott
From: Under Three Flags in Cuba ... Buy this Book
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