It was the business of B.-P. to raise a force of natives, and to proceed with this little army as soon as possible in front of the expedition, acting as a covering force.  That is to say, the work of these undrilled, stupid, and not over-brave natives was scouting, a duty which while it is the most fascinating part of a soldier’s life is also one of the most difficult.  This then was an undertaking of which many a man might have felt shy, but Baden-Powell (the army is full of Baden-Powells) went at it cheerfully enough.  On the arid desert outside the castle, which is called the parade ground, B.-P. and Captain Graham, D.S.O., taught these negroes, under a blazing sun, the rudiments of soldiering.  In one part of their drill a few simple whistle-signals were substituted for the usual words of command, such as “Halt” and “Rally,” and a red fez was served out to the Levy (which in the end amounted to 860 men) as a British uniform.  The glory of this “kit,” however, was somewhat obscured by a commissariat load which each warrior carried on his head; but there was no heart under those shiny ebon skins which did not beat quicker for the possession of the red fez.  The Levy, of course, had its band—­a few men who made a tremendous din on elephant-hide drums, and a few more who produced two heart-breaking notes on elephants’ hollowed tusks garnished with human jaw-bones.  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. did not despair of his men, neither did he ill-treat them.  For three days he worked hard at tree-felling himself, and he only desisted from this labour on the discovery that the sight of his hunting-crop brought more trees to the ground than all his strokes with the axe.  This hunting-crop was called “Volapuek,” because every tribe understood its meaning, and during the march Baden-Powell found it of inestimable value.  “But, though often shown,” he says, “it was never used.”  The men might be stupid, they might be idle, but B.-P. can get work out of the worst men without bullying and without continual punishments.