n
frontier of the Adansi, sent down for arms, and were supplied
without any mishap.

Illustration: Map illustrating the Ashanti Campaign.

Colonel Wilkinson telegraphed orders to a force, which had started
two days before, to halt at Fumsu until he joined them with the
newly-arrived contingents. Colonel Willcocks now had four hundred
and fifty men, under Captain Hall, at Kwisa and Bekwai; Captain
Slater a handful of men at Kwisa; Colonel Wilkinson a company at
Fumsu; Colonel Carter the two hundred soldiers just landed on the
line of march, and three hundred men from Northern Nigeria. Nine
hundred reinforcements were known to be on their way. The force was
scattered over a hundred and forty miles, and numerically only
equal to the garrison they were going to relieve. The carriers were
utterly insufficient for the transport.

The newly-arrived troops, with Colonel Willcocks and his staff in
front, rode out of the town on the morning of the 5th of June. A
drizzling rain was falling, but this soon ceased and the sun broke
out. The road lay over low scrub-covered sand hills. It was a fair
one, with the exception of bad bits, at intervals. The first day's
march was a short one, as much time had been lost in getting the
carriers together, and loading them up.

They halted that evening at Akroful. The place afforded but little
accommodation. Five white officers slept together in one small
room. There was a storm during the night, but the sky had cleared
by the time the troops started in the morning.

They now entered a very different country. It was the belt of
forest, three hundred miles wide, which ran across the whole
country. Great as had been the heat, the day before, the gloom of
the forest was more trying to the nerves. Except where the road had
been cleared, the advance was impeded by the thick undergrowth of
bush and small trees, through which it was impossible to pass
without cutting a path with a sword. Above the bush towered the
giants of the forest--great cotton trees, thirty or forty feet in
circumference, and rising to the height of from two to three
hundred feet. Round the tops of these many birds were flitting, but
in the underbrush there was no sign or sound of life. Thorny
creepers bound the trees together.

In the small clearings, where deserted and ruined villages stood, a
few flowers were to be found. Here, also, great butterflies flew
about.

The moist air, tainted with decaying vegetation; the