North - sometimes known as 'Couper Comeril Coles'

Nicholls - Commerell Cowper-Coles, senior prospector for the East Africa Syndicate, died of blackwater fever. …

North - arr. Mombasa from SA on prospecting expedition led by F.R. Burnham, May 1902; at Kisumu 22-11-1902

North - Mining Engineer; Kisumu 22/11/1902

Gazette - 1-9-1903 - Probate and Administration - Commerell Cowper Coles late of  Kamagambo, deceased who died at Kamagambo (Kisumu) on the 21st day of July 1903

C.A. Wiggins, 'Early Days in British East Africa and Uganda', Bodleian Library Mss. 740.12.r.44  He was brought into Kisumu on a stretcher one evening from his camp up in the Maragoli. He was unconscious on arrival and never regained consciousness. |He died of blackwater fever. He was one of the BEA Syndicate, led by Major Burnham and had been in and out of Kisumu for several months.

Oserian Cowper-Coles met in November 1902 the Australian Tom Deacon and the Irish John Walsh who had pegged and claimed mining rights on a vast soda lake which lay in the south of Maasai country. Cowper-Coles bought those rights for £15 and 20% of any profit which resulted from exploitation of the huge soda deposits making up the lake and on 27 November he transferred the rights to his employers the East African Syndicate.