the 42nd--to whom all
honour be due--volunteered to carry supplies, in addition to their arms,
accoutrements, and ammunition. They acted as carriers for several days,
and moved such quantities of provisions to the front that the pressure
was removed and a further advance made possible. Even if more carriers
had been obtained from the already ransacked native villages, they could
not have arrived in time, for the rainy season was fast approaching and
the delay of a fortnight would have been fatal.

There was a peculiar irony of fate in the expedition being thus relieved
of its most pressing difficulties through the exertions of the West
India regiments. It had been Sir Garnet Wolseley's original intention to
take into Ashanti territory only the Rifle Brigade, the 23rd, and the
1st and 2nd West India Regiments; and, on the arrival of the hired
transport, _Sarmatian_, he wrote, on the 15th of December, that he did
not propose landing the 42nd. In the course of the next three days,
however, he changed his views, and, in his letter of the 18th December,
gave as his reason: "I find that the one great obstacle to the
employment of a third battalion of English troops, viz., the difficulty
of transport, is as great in the case of a West India regiment. The West
India soldier has the same rations as the European soldier, and a West
India regiment requires, man for man, exactly the same amount of
transport as a European regiment." The 42nd, therefore, was to be landed
and taken to the front, while the 1st West India Regiment was to remain
at Cape Coast Castle and Elmina as a reserve. Afterwards, when the
transport failed, it was found that the West India soldier could do the
work of the European on half rations, and carry his own supplies as
well.

West India regiments at the present day labour under many disadvantages.
Owing to the two battalions having to furnish garrisons for colonies
which really require three, they are alternately for one period of three
years divided into three detachments, and for the next period of three
years into six. No lieutenant-colonel of a West India regiment can ever
see the whole of his regiment together. The largest number that, under
present circumstances, he can ever have under him at any one station is
four companies; and the most he can have under his actual command at any
one time is six companies on board a troopship. Thus in a regiment there
are sometimes three, and sometimes six, officer