At the head of this force B.-P.

and Captain Graham set out on their journey from Cape Coast to Kumassi, a distance of nearly 150 miles, on the 21st of December.
Soon after leaving the coast the little expedition plunged into the bush, and then amid the giant ferns and palms began to appear "the solemn, shady miles of forest giants, whose upper parts gleam far above the dense undergrowth in white pillars against the grey-blue sky." The Levy had now reached the regular forest, the beautiful, awe-inspiring, but, alas, evil-smelling forest.

Here it was found by Baden-Powell that, in addition to scouting, his force would have to play the arduous part of road-makers, and, therefore, whenever he came upon a village such tools as felling-axes, hatchets, spades, and picks were requisitioned.

But it was no easy task teaching the negroes to perform this labour.

The man who was given a felling-axe immediately set about scraping up weeds, while the grinning warrior armed with a spade incontinently hacked at a hoary tree with Gladstonian ardour.
"The stupid inertness of the puzzled negro," says B.-P., "is duller than that of an ox; a dog would grasp your meaning in one-half the time." But B.-P.