Baden-Powell: Founder of the Boy Scouts [EXCERPT]
by Tim Jeal
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Chapter 5. THE COMING MAN
1. 'A Grand Thing for Me': The Ashanti Campaign (1895-96)
The country to which Lord Wolseley was sending Baden-Powell was one in which he himself had served with characteristically crushing impact. In 1873, just after enduring the seventh full-scale invasion of the Gold Coast by the Ashanti in as many decades, the British Government decided to send Sir Gamet Wolseley to punish them. He did so the following year with his usual thoroughness, and by the Treaty of Fomena required the Ashanti ruler to pay a massive indemnity of 50,000 ounces of gold and to renounce all claims to sovereignty over half-a-dozen neighbouring tribes. The Ashanti would also have to abandon 'human sacrifices' and keep open the road linking their capital of Kumasi with the Gold Coast.
A year later the Governor of the Gold Coast, Mr G. C. Strahan, sent a despatch to his masters in the Colonial Office in which he lucidly spelled out their dilemma. Because Wolseley and his 2,000 soldiers had broken the power of the Asantehene (or ruler of Ashanti), he had no control over tribes which had formerly been his vassals and consequently could not stop the inter-tribal raids which were already damaging trade. But if the British were to allow the ruler of Ashanti to grow strong again, in time he would once more wage war on the Gold Coast. [1]
For a decade the Colonial Office pursued a policy defined by an astute Under-Secretary as 'masterly inactivity'. [2] Then in the mid-1880s the Colonial Office began to receive warnings from British traders about French and German ambitions in the region. The London and the Manchester Chambers of Commerce urged a more energetic policy in West Africa, not only to keep out foreign competition but also to revive stagnating trade. They felt that the presence of a British Resident in Kumasi would prove a stabilizing influence. Believing that such a move would simply hasten the incorporation of Ashanti into the Gold Coast Colony, the British Government preferred to do nothing. By 1893, however, the acting Governor of the Gold Coast had been converted to the view that 'the Ashanti have exercised such a baneful influence on the English settlements of the Gold Coast in years past ... and have so constantly interfered with trade that it should be a settled policy of H.M. Government to expedite the annexation of Ashanti with all reasonable and proper means.' [3]
It only awaited the arrival of a Colonial Secretary in favour of Imperial expansion in Africa to set the ball rolling. With the appointment of Joseph Chamberlain in June 1895, the moment had come.
Chamberlain lost no time in elaborating his doctrine. 'I regard many of our colonies,' he declared in August 1895, 'as being in the condition of undeveloped estates, and estates which can never be developed without Imperial assistance.' [4] The new Colonial Secretary saw at once that, if the Gold Coast was ever to prosper, Ashanti would have to be annexed. So early in September he told the new Governor, Mr W. E. Maxwell, to send an ultimatum to the [King] Asantehene Agyeman Prempeh. In December 1893 a Permanent Secretary in the Colonial Office had proposed that: 'If we decide for protection [declaring Ashanti a British Protectorate], we should begin by demanding a large sum for indemnity in respect of recent events [Ashanti raids on the Gold Coast] to be withdrawn if Prempeh asks for protection.' [5] This was power politics at its most cynical.
In Maxwell's ultimatum, Prempeh was declared not to have observed the terms of Wolseley's Treaty of Fomena. He had failed to pay the whole of the financial indemnity (which he must now remit in full), had attacked tribes friendly to the British Government, had checked trade and had permitted the continuance of human sacrifice. Prempeh was also informed that he would have to accept a British Resident at Kumasi forthwith. For the Governor suddenly to invoke a 22-year-old treaty without immediate grounds for complaint struck Prempeh as extraordinarily unjust. Full payment of the absurdly large indemnity had never been expected or there would have been agitation for it years ago; nor was it reasonable to blame him for having failed to establish peaceful conditions in Ashanti (conducive to the growth of trade) without first having permitted him to impose his authority upon subject tribes. But since the chiefs of these tribes were endlessly seeking sanctuary in the Gold Coast and appealing to the Governor for protection, Prempeh had often been thwarted. Nor did he think it fair to describe as 'human sacrifices' death sentences required by the Ashanti legal system for a range of crimes no more extensive than that obtaining in England 100 years earlier.
Believing that an appeal to Queen Victoria -- over the heads of Governor Maxwell and his colleagues -- would secure justice for him, Prempeh sent an embassy to England and ignored the ultimatum. This was a serious mistake. His ambassadors were refused an audience with the Queen; nor were they received by the Colonial Secretary, who believed that Prempeh had only sent these envoys as a delaying tactic and would disown on their return whatever they negotiated in England. Chamberlain therefore asked the War Office for assistance, and in due course Lord Wolseley prepared an expeditionary force. Ashanti would receive British 'protection' whether its ruler and its people wanted it or not.
In the House of Commons Chamberlain chose to represent himself and the Government as acting solely in the interests of Ashanti and the Gold Coast. For decades, he said: 'This district of Africa, which is rich in natural resources, has been devastated, destroyed and ruined by inter-tribal disputes, and especially by the evil Government of the authorities of Ashanti.' [6] Wolseley's 1874 expedition had created a power vacuum and consequent chaos. In 1896 the intention was to fill the vacuum with British rule.
Most Victorian army officers longed to fight, considering with Lord Wolseley that the sentiment '"war is a horrible thing", is a nice heading, but only for a schoolgirl's copy book'. [7] 'It is only through experience of the sensation,' wrote the Commander-in-Chief, 'that we learn how intense, even in anticipation, is the rapture-giving delight which the attack upon an enemy affords ... All other sensations are but as the tinkling of a doorbell in comparison with the throbbing of Big Ben.' [8] Stephe's only fear as he prepared for departure was 'that the enemy will give in altogether'. The same sentiments were echoed by the vast majority of his brother officers. Like them, he wanted to go not simply for the sake of a fight but to gain promotion. Thanks to their superior weapons, few white soldiers were likely to die at the hands of their enemies during campaigns against Africans. Such 'little wars' were often viewed almost as a superior kind of sport -- 'manhunting', as Baden-Powell described tracking down enemy patrols. Nevertheless the reputation of West Africa as the white man's graveyard had earned that region real respect -- principally, but not by any means entirely, on account of disease. In 1824 the Governor of the Gold Coast and most of his 500-strong force were killed by 10,000 Ashanti. Sir Charles McCarthy's gold-rimmed skull had been the drinking cup of Ashanti rulers until Lord Wolseley's arrival half a century later.
When Stephe boarded the train at Euston, bound for Liverpool, he was seen off by his brothers Frank and Baden, and by 'about a million of the public. . . although it was past midnight, cheering and singing patriotic songs as if we were off to fight the French.' [9] Baden-Powell would have known that Wolseley's triumph of 1874 had been bought at the expense of 300 British casualties, the majority from disease. He was warned about malaria by Wolseley himself, who recommended him to 'take a double set of mosquito curtains to rig over my bed at night, to keep out the malaria'. Once inside the curtains Baden-Powell was advised to smoke a pipe of tobacco. Since insects dislike smoke this was excellent advice -- given, incidentally, before the Anopheles mosquito had been identified as the culprit. [10] Baden-Powell dutifully smoked until the damp climate rotted his tobacco. [11]
Sir Baker Russell and Kenneth Mclaren came aboard the transport at Liverpool to say farewell. Sir Baker gave Stephe a short sword-bayonet which he had found effective in hand-to-hand fighting against the Ashanti in 1874. 'The Boy' handed over a compass -- an indispensable aid in the tropical forests which covered much of West Africa. During the voyage Baden-Powell read Sir William Butler's The Story of a Failure, an account of the author's inability in 1874 to stop the Native Levy from melting away into the forest after the Ashanti capital had been taken. Butler's force had come from a single tribe, and Baden-Powell determined not to make the same mistake in recruiting his own men.
'The job for my force,' Baden-Powell wrote, 'was to go ahead of the main body which was composed of white and West Indian troops, to scout in the bush some days ahead, and to ascertain the moves and whereabouts of the enemy. Also we had to act as pioneers in cutting a path and making a roadway through the jungle for the troops to follow ... ' [12]
On arrival at Cape Coast Baden-Powell and his subaltern, Captain H. W. Graham, recruited their 800 men from six tribes, the largest contingent being furnished by King Matikoli of the Krobos. It amused Baden-Powell that these local chiefs were known as kings, and it appealed to his sense of humour to fine them a few shillings for some paltry irregularity. [13] Actually assembling the Levy was far harder than obtaining promises of men from the various chiefs. Noon on 16 December was the time ordained for the Levy to parade for the first time outside Cape Coast Castle.
The parade-ground outside the castle lies like an arid desert in the midday sun, and the sea-breeze wanders where it listeth. Not a man is there. It is a matter then for a hammock-ride through the slums of the slum that forms the town. Kings are forked out of the hovels where they are lodging, at the end of a stick; they in their turn rouse out their captains, and by two o'clock the army is assembled. Then it is a sight for the gods to see 'The Sutler' putting each man in his place. The stupid inertness of the puzzled negro is duller than that of an ox; a dog would grasp your meaning in one-half the time. Men and brothers! They may be brothers, but they certainly are not men. [14]
The last two sentences of this passage, which appeared in Baden-Powell's published account of the Campaign, have been quoted by both his recent detractors, Piers Brendon and Michael Rosenthal, to show that he was an unrepentant racist. In fact, passages almost as critical of Africans were written by two of the nineteenth century's greatest missionaries, Robert Moffat and David Livingstone, both of whom developed close and affectionate relationships with individual Africans. Livingstone wrote of a tribe that he esteemed more than many as being 'totally lacking in all self-respect, savage and cruel under success, but easily cowed and devoid of all moral courage'. [15] From the Africans' point of view, Baden-Powell's arrival presented them with an interesting opportunity for earning money and trade goods. Naturally they hoped to secure whatever advantage they could without endangering their lives or exhausting themselves unduly. Being accustomed to having his orders promptly obeyed and his prearranged appointments kept, Stephe made the common European mistake of supposing that Africans whose way of life did not require the punctuality demanded of factory workers were too stupid to run their affairs in an organized fashion. By his statement 'they may be brothers, but they certainly are not men', he did not mean to relegate them to membership of some sub-species. His preoccupation with 'making men' out of his raw young soldiers gives an indication of what he really meant. Somebody who was 'not a man', in the sense of being self-reliant and hardy, was 'a waster' or 'a jellyfish' in Baden-Powell's argot, but he would not have intended to imply that an African 'jellyfish' was not a human being. The fact that he wrote openly about Africans in this way, for publication, shows that he expected most of his readers to share his views, as indeed they did. He called Africans 'Diggers' or 'savages', as did most Britains of all classes during the 1890s.
From Stephe's point of view he was paying his Africans a generous wage to serve in the Levy (they were being paid as much as the privates among the expedition's 2,000 British soldiers), but they saw no reason why they should not try to extract more from him and find out how little they could get away with doing. Although Baden-Powell misunderstood his recruits en masse, he developed excellent relationships with individuals and relied very heavily upon one man in particular, Chief Andoh of the Elmina tribe, to whom he dedicated his book The Downfall of Prempeh, calling the chief, 'My Guide, Adviser and Friend'. In writing to Lord Wolseley, who considered that the negro would have remained 'more useful if we had never emancipated him', [16] Baden-Powell never pandered to his Commander-in-Chiefs prejudices. Instead, he described Chief Andoh as 'one of the very best and nicest natives I ever met'. [17]
Baden-Powell ruled out the possibility of a serious mutiny by enrolling numerous different tribal contingents, but this presented him with severe linguistic and organizational difficulties. Nevertheless the various groups worked well at different tasks. Building bridges was one of the Levy's most important jobs and Baden-Powell was impressed by the coastal tribesmen's mastery of knots which they used in making fishing nets. By knotting lengths of creeper they could bind substantial wooden structures together. Yet these same men caused an early crisis by refusing to march because they had insufficient salt in their ration. Not having enough salt to grant their request, he tried to reason with them; having wasted several hours in fruitless negotiation, he 'called out to the King to warn his men that I was now going to fetch out our old friend "the whip that talks" and that the last man in camp would be the one he would talk to. I moved with a joyous step to my tent, and when I came out a minute later and gave one resounding crack with my hunting crop, the whole party had scrambled to their feet and were already humping their packs up on to their shoulders.' [18]
Stephe adopted as his personal catch-phrase: 'A smile and a stick will carry you through any difficulty.' If smiling persuasion failed, the stick or whip remained in reserve. Whether he ever used either is uncertain. [19] He himself denied it; but Harold Begbie, his first biographer, contradicts him -- although no evidence exists, and when Begbie's book was in preparation Stephe himself was in Mafeking and therefore unable to comment. Floggings undoubtedly took place in Baden-Powell's column, as in the main force, with the number of lashes limited to twelve in general orders, and these only to be delivered in the presence of a commissioned officer. [20] One such punishment was sketched by Baden-Powell, and a slightly altered version of this was later published in The Graphic [see second photo section]. [21]
A flogging during the Ashanti campaign (1896); this drawing based on an original sketch by Baden-Powell
Most nineteenth-century European travellers, in command of hundreds of African porters, had resorted to floggings and threats of summary execution when placed in circumstances often much less dangerous than those in which Baden-Powell and his subaltern regularly found themselves. [22] Had they ever capitulated to malingerers, it would have doomed the further progress of the Levy, and very likely of the whole expedition, which relied upon the advance party to clear the ground and give warning of the enemy's presence. In dense forests men who knew the terrain, even if armed with spears, could easily surprise and even annihilate a better equipped force. Their 500 Africans were armed with primitive flindocks and issued with red fezes, but these accoutrements did not make them any less indisciplined. Most of the tribal groups were unable even to communicate with one another, except through interpreters.
'In addition to the "whip that talks" I had also another moral persuader in the shape of Isiqwi-qwa, a Colt repeating carbine. This weapon could bang away from its magazine a dozen rounds if need be as fast as a man could fire.' By means of a demonstration on some paw-paw fruit, Baden-Powell usually managed to defuse potentially explosive situations. [23] But since he and Graham could have been murdered in their sleep with the greatest of ease, Baden-Powell engaged a 'special body-guard of eight hammock men from Sierra Leone. Their country manners and customs and language, being entirely alien to those of my larger contingent, would keep them as a corps d'elite, a thing apart, a reliable guard.' [24] He faced a real crisis when these very men turned against him, but again his Colt repeater saved him. He had been confronted on a deserted path by all eight hammock men, whose demeanour left him in no doubt that they meant trouble. Raising his Colt and releasing the safety-catch, Baden-Powell ordered them back to camp and to his great relief, they obeyed. Stephe's African factotum (a member of the Hausa tribe) punished the miscreants in local style.
He cut down a small tree so that it lay about a foot above the ground, and he made the whole lot of eight men sit on the ground and put their legs under the tree with their feet projecting on the far side; then each man had to lean over and touch his toes with his fingers; the Hausa then came along and tied every thumb to every great toe. This was his idea of a stocks and there he left them for the night. The prisoners, however, devised a method of obtaining release -- or thought they did. One of them started to yowl in a miserable way at the top of his voice and as soon as his breath ran out, the yowl was taken up by the next, and so it went on in succession. This they hoped would disturb me to such an extent that I should order their release. But before I could suggest a remedy the Hausa himself had devised one. He cut a thin whippy cane and went to the singer and smote him across the back, and then stood up by the next man ready to smite the moment he began his song. The singing stopped like magic and was not resumed. [25]
There are many accounts of the predicament of whites in remote parts of Africa, and all confirm the importance of maintaining a bold front and behaving as if invulnerable. In The Flame Trees of Thika, Elspeth Huxley wrote about white settlers in Kenya at a later date, but her thesis applies equally to isolated white officers leading large numbers of Africans three decades earlier.
Respect [wrote Mrs Huxley] was the only protection available to Europeans who lived singly, or in scattered families among thousands of Africans accustomed to constant warfare and armed with spears and poisoned arrows . . . This respect preserved them like an invisible coat of mail or a form of magic, and seldom failed; but it had to be very carefully guarded. The least rent or puncture might, if not immediately checked, split the whole garment asunder and expose the wearer in all his human vulnerability ... Challenged, it could be brushed aside like a spider's web. [26]
On this expedition Baden-Powell constantly demonstrated his canniness in dealing with his men. They constructed their bridges carefully because, on completion, he obliged the builders to jump vigorously upon them. But canny or not, it took all Baden-Powell's skill to persuade his men to cross the river Prah after some of his Adansi scouts returned with intelligence that Prempeh and the Ashanti meant to lure them all forward and then fall upon the column's rear. News that some of the Ashanti were armed with modern Snider rifles proved very damaging to morale, since the Levy had nothing better than antiquated flintlocks. [27] The Gold Coast proverb: 'Softly, softly, catchee monkey,' proved extremely helpful to Baden-Powell. [28] He divided the Levy into small companies of about twenty men under a 'Captain' responsible for their conduct. [29] Stephe was not helped when Graham was laid low by malaria, and the two officers sent to replace him suffered the same fate. 'As for me,' Baden-Powell told Wolseley, 'I have not yet had time to get anything worse than a healthy appetite.' [30]
On 27 December 1895 the Levy crossed the river Prah -- the huge dug-out ferry making numerous journeys before the whole force and its equipment were deposited on the far side. During the next few days the forest became thicker, and the path narrower. If the scouts were bringing in accurate information, the Ashanti king was assembling an army of 8,000 warriors. In early January, as Baden-Powell's men drew closer to Kumasi, the Ashanti capital, he gave orders to move only by night.
It was as dark as pitch, one's only guide to the path was the white rag or package on the next man in front. With stick in hand, one groped one's way through the deep, dense gloom ... Now a jerk down as one stepped off a hummock, now a stumble over a root, now caught in a prickly creeper, now ploughing through the holding swamp; and all around the deep silence of the forest, only broken by the rare crack of a trodden stick. One could scarcely believe that several hundred people were with one, moving -- slowly, it was true, but still moving -- ever forward. The carriers carried, in addition to their loads, their own packages of food and furniture -- the furniture consisting of a mat, the food of plantains and dried fish . . . Fallen trees were frequent and tangled bush and streams combined to check and break the column. Each man took his several seconds to negotiate the obstacles, and lost a few yards of distance in doing so, thus every minute saw the column growing longer. This could only be remedied by frequent halts and slow marching at the head. . . Then the whisper passed that the scouts had discovered the enemy. Suddenly a flicker and a flare of light in the bush well to our right. Enemy? No, it is the advanced scouts on our road, who think they have discovered an ambush. They creep round the particular thicket they suspect, then suddenly lighting brands, they hurl them into the hiding place to light up the hoped-for target. This time they draw blank . . . The march does not appear so tedious or so slow when one moves among the scouts. These fellows are on the qui vive all the time -- now stopping to listen, now diving into the bush, with scarce a rustle, to search the flanks, nor is their watchfulness too great for the occasion, for twice we came upon the glowing logs of outpost fires that have hastily been quitted; but those are the only signs of men. [31]
In the early stages of the march the British troops had liked to chant their song:
Oh Prempeh, Prempeh,
You'd better mind your eye;
You'd better far be civil,
Or else you'll have to die,
And your kingdom of Ashanti,
You'll never see it more,
If you fight the old West Yorks
And the Special Service Corps. [32]
In fact from the very beginning Prempeh gave every sign of wishing to be 'civil'. The first evidence of his unwillingness to fight came on 8 January, but his envoys were not trusted. On 11 January Major Gordon, who had taken over from Graham as second-in-command of the Levy, sent a note to Baden-Powell: 'Had great palaver ... The King had sent his two little sons as hostages covered with golden ornaments. I coveted the latter but would have nothing to do with the former, and repeated my message that nothing could be done except at Kumasi, and there in Prempeh's presence ... ' [33] Since Prempeh had sent his sons in person, their message ought to have been considered trustworthy. It is not clear whether Gordon or Baden-Powell relayed everything they knew to Sir Francis Scott, the commander of the expedition. They may have prevented intelligence getting back to the main body in an effort to deny Prempeh a peaceful conclusion. Certainly they both wanted proper 'active service' -- but so too did Sir Francis, who must have feared being made to look foolish, with his gigantic force, if Prempeh refused to fight. By his determination to march into Kumasi, Sir Francis and his staff may well have been hoping to provoke resistance.
On 15 January the Levy arrived at the village of Ordasu, a mere two days' march from Kumasi, to be greeted by another embassy, this time offering complete and unconditional submission. Yet even now Baden-Powell and Gordon affected to be unconvinced. 'In spite of all assurances we cannot trust to what the Ashantis say,' wrote Stephe. [34] But two days later in Kumasi as the main body of British troops marched in, Prempeh told General Sir Francis Scott that it had always been his intention to submit to the Governor of the Gold Coast as soon as he entered the town. But Stephe still doubted his good faith and during the night, he and some of his Adansi scouts lay in hiding close to Prempeh's residence in case he tried to escape under cover of darkness. Prempeh stayed where he was, and Baden-Powell and his men only succeeded in scaring a number of the King's counsellors on their way back to their huts. His men also pounced on several of their armed servants, and he himself wrestled one of these men to the ground. As with so many of Baden-Powell's accounts of his adventures, this incident was later inflated to such an extent that the servant became 'Prempeh's Chief Scout'. For Mrs Wade's biography, Stephe obligingly drew a sketch of this incident, writing under it: 'Capture of Prempeh's Chief Scout 1895.' (The date should have been 1896.) In The Downfall of Prempeh (Baden-Powell's published account of the campaign) he entitled one of the drawings: 'Capture of one of Prempeh's scouts by the author.' [35] The text, however (p. 121), makes it clear that the man was merely a servant who had done no harm to anyone. Robbed of his weapon, he was at once released.
The following day the whole of Sir Francis Scott's force paraded in a closed square on the open space in the centre of Kumasi. Prempeh, who had obviously hoped for better terms because of his offer to submit, was outraged to be ordered to kneel down in the presence of his people and hug the knees of Governor Maxwell, who was seated next to Sir Francis Scott and his staff officer, Colonel Kempster, on a dais made of biscuit tins. The Governor announced that, since the terms of the Treaty of Fomena had not been observed, he would not conclude another treaty unless the expense of the present expedition were met at once. When asked to pay 50,000 ounces of gold, Prempeh was astounded; the most he could manage immediately, he said, was 700 ounces. Whereupon Maxwell arrested not only him but his mother and father, his brother, his uncles, and a dozen of his advisers. The detention of Prempeh, whom Maxwell wished to deport to a remote island, came as a great shock to the Ashanti and to the Colonial Secretary. 'Remind Maxwell,' minuted an exasperated Chamberlain, 'that if Prempeh agreed to ultimatum and paid indemnity no further steps would be taken against him. He has submitted, and as to the indemnity if he has no money he cannot pay ... Mr Maxwell must give us much better reasons [for his action] than any adduced at present.' [36]
Maxwell justified himself by saying that, since Prempeh had neither been defeated in the field nor even suffered the destruction of his principal towns, it would be impossible to convince his people that British authority had to be respected in future unless something dramatic were done. 'To have been satisfied by mere words, whether the verbal supplication of a frightened but unpunished savage, or written promises, would have been folly.' [37] Chamberlain was probably more influenced by the reflection that, since the British Government could claim legitimacy neither through a treaty with the lawful government of Ashanti nor by right of conquest, Prempeh, if left at liberty, would have been entitled under international law to sign a treaty with France or Germany. [38]
The rank and file members of the British force might have felt more sympathy for Prempeh had they not discovered large numbers of decapitated bodies and skeletons in the town. As indicated earlier, these corpses did not as they supposed belong to hapless victims of 'human sacrifice', but were the bodies of condemned criminals who had been brought to Kumasi from all over Ashanti for execution. Death was not dealt out arbitrarily for the amusement of the King and the executioners, as claimed by Baden-Powell. [39] Nevertheless the skeletons put paid to any sympathy the British might otherwise have felt for Prempeh. Stephe, however, expressed no disgust. 'If you want a few hundred fresh skulls,' he informed his artist brother, Frank, 'I can send them to you with very little difficulty.' [40] Frank declined this offer. When Baden-Powell was despatched to nearby Bantama with orders to find the royal treasure, he found instead a large brass bowl about the size of a hip-bath and as deep. He was delighted to learn that this container was the very one used to collect the blood which regularly flowed from the necks of those executed. As he told Frank, this was a souvenir which he would certainly be bringing home. [41] He later presented it to the Royal United Services Institution. The discovery of the 'blood bowl', as he called it, made up for the disappointment of not being able to bring back a gold snake and gold sword, both of which he had been obliged to give up to the Colonial Office along with other golden artifacts. Nevertheless he kept back, illicitly, some gold jewellery which he would one day have made into earrings for his wife.
Prempeh would live in exile for 25 years in the Seychelles, where he became a Christian and attended church wearing a top hat and frockcoat. By then his son was a Boy Scout. Baden-Powell would later claim that the Scouts' staff originated in Ashanti as the forked stick with which Captain R. S. Curtis, of the Royal Engineers, had lifted up the telegraph wire to hang it out of harm's way in the branches above the track. [42]The Krobo fishermen's knots and their skill at bridge-building had suggested knots (and indeed bridge-building) as important elements in the Boy Scout programme.
At the start of the wearying 150-mile march back to the coast, Baden-Powell wrote to Lord Wolseley, bemoaning the fact that 'the Ashanti have caved in without a fight ... We are a very sad camp in consequence ... ' [43] By the time Cape Coast Castle had been reached, half the force was suffering from dysentery and malaria. Over three-quarters of the officers were laid up, and two senior members of the staff were mortally ill. One of these -- Prince Henry of Battenburg, a son-in-law of Queen Victoria -- died during the voyage home.
By contrast, Stephe, after a week of non-stop marching through the tropical rain forest, was in excellent health. To have kept control over nearly 1,000 untrained Africans for six weeks, and to have kept them together through some of the most difficult terrain in Africa, was a great achievement. To have kept fit, too, also had nothing to do with luck. Apart from sleeping inside double mosquito curtains, he had taken great care of his feet and had always had a dry change of clothes to put on. Baden-Powell, aged 39, was a very different proposition from the young man who had begged to come home from India. His slight build now belied his toughness. [44]
On his return to England, Baden-Powell was immediately promoted to the rank of Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel. He had also achieved a lucrative journalistic scoop when, through pure good fortune, he had got his copy through to the Daily Chronicle (which retained his services), predicting the imminent surrender of Kumasi just before a tree fell on the telegraph wire and stopped all communication for several days. He was paid five guineas a column by the Daily Chronicle, and a lump sum of £170 from The Graphic for his sketches. He was also offered an advance of £100 by Mr Methuen to turn his diary into a book. 'Did I tell you,' he wrote uneasily to his aunt, Lady Smyth, 'I've given in to pressure and agreed to become an author. I am very much ashamed of myself -- and the publishers would not take the book if, as I proposed, it was to be anonymous. But the lure was offered, my debts stared at me, and I fell.' [45] Given Stephe's inclusion of the picture of himself capturing the 'Chief Scout', his efforts to persuade Methuen to publish anonymously are unlikely to have been vigorous.
Sir George Baden-Powell set the final seal of success on the expedition when he hosted a celebratory dinner at the House of Commons. Guests included Lord Wolseley, Mr W. St. John Brodrick, soon to be Secretary of State for War, Viscount Goschen, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Curzon, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and General Sir Reginald Gipps, the Military Secretary at Headquarters. [46] The expedition itself ended in a curious way which eerily anticipated Stephe's next appointment.
On arrival at the London docks, a big ship entered the dock just ahead of us and as she did so a band on the wharf struck up 'See the Conquering Hero comes', and a large posse of generals and staff officers from the War Office formed up on a red carpet to receive her as she moored at the quay. As our ship was then warped in to the opposite side of the dock the band suddenly ceased playing and the bandsmen, together with generals and staff, were observed scuttling round the dock, hastily leaving the first ship in order to come round and welcome us. There had been a slight mistake. The first ship proved to be the transport bringing from South Africa as prisoners the officers and men implicated in the Jameson Raid, [*] for trial and punishment at home. [47]
The Jameson Raiders included in their number almost the entire police force of Rhodesia, and their removal had not gone unremarked by the Matabele. In any future emergency in Matabeleland, or anywhere else in Africa, Lord Wolseley would know that in Lieutenant-Colonel Baden-Powell he had one officer upon whom he could call with unreserved confidence.