The officers employed in relieving Coomassie may well mourn the
ill-luck which has distracted public attention from their services and their heroism. Sir James Willcocks's splendid second relief of the post has indeed been noticed and rewarded by his superiors, but there was a previous relief carried out by Major Morris, Commissioner of the Northern Territories, which, but that publio attention was distracted, would have made that officer as completely a popular hero as General Baden.PowelL He successfully led a minute force of less than two hundred natives with four officers in April from Gambaga to Coomassie, a distance of three hundred and forty miles through tropical forest, fighting repeatedly on the way. He was at last badly wounded, but though often unconscious from pain, he continued to direct operations from his hammock. From May 15th to June 23rd he guided the defence, whioh was conducted successfully till the Major, finding that ammunition was nearly spent and that the garrison had only three days' rations left, decided to evacuate the place. He discovered a comparatively un- watched route, and on June 23rd, under cover of a heavy mist, commenced a march to the coast with the Governor and six hundred non-combatants in his charge. The march through the wildest forest, often under tropical rain, lasted eighteen days, which may be said to have been days of incessant battle; but owing mainly to Major Morris's control of his Hauseas, the convoy arrived at Cape Coast Castle on July 11th, having lost one officer and eighty men. The relieving column had, in fact, endured every hardship and faced every danger possible in war, yet there is risk that it may be forgotten.
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