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A more serious result of the disbandment of the Third West India Regiment was the Ashanti war of 1873-4. When the Ashanti invading army crossed the Prah, the Administrator of the Gold Coast had only two hundred soldiers with which to defend a colony of more than two hundred miles in extent. Had the Third West India Regiment been then in existence, and been sent to the Gold Coast with the same promptitude that characterized the despatch of the Second West India Regiment in 1881, the war of 1873 would equally have been nipped in the bud. As it turned out, the interest of the money expended in that war would have more than sufficed to keep up the Third West India Regiment; so that no saving was effected after all.

Our possessions in the Gambia consist of St. Mary’s Island, a strip of land one mile in breadth on the river bank opposite, called “the ceded mile,” about three square miles of unoccupied bush and swamp higher up on the western bank of the river known as Albreda, Macarthy’s Island, and British Combo. Bathurst alone is inhabited by Europeans, nearly all of whom are French. The trade is entirely in French hands, the exports consisting principally of ground-nuts, hides, and beeswax, of which the first are shipped to France and used in the manufacture of olive oil. From a commercial point of view we have nothing to lose by exchanging the Gambia; and should France again broach the subject, as the present Government is now, 1881, almost identical with that which offered the settlement unconditionally in 1869, it could now hardly refuse to part with it without stultifying its former action. At present we are playing the part of the fabled dog in the manger: we will not make use of the Gambia as a means of opening up the interior, nor expend any money on the colony; and, although it is of no value to us as it is, we will not give it up to another nation, to which it would prove exceedingly useful, and which is willing to make the necessary outlay for unclosing this long-closed artery.