d demands of the British Government for the restoration of
the prisoners having been treated with contemptuous silence by the
King, Colonel Merewether, the Political Agent at Aden, who in July,
1867, had been directed to proceed to Massowa and endeavour to obtain
the release of the captives, and to make inquiries and collect
information in case of an expedition having to be sent, reported to
the Secretary of State that he had failed to communicate with the
King, and urged the advisability of immediate measures being taken to
prepare a force in India for the punishment of Theodore and the rescue
of the prisoners. Colonel Merewether added that in Abyssinia the
opinion had become very general that England knew herself to be
too weak to resent insult, and that amongst the peoples of the
neighbouring countries, even so far as Aden, there was a feeling of
contemptuous surprise at the continued long-suffering endurance of the
British Government.

On receipt of this communication, Her Majesty's Government, having
exhausted all their resources for the preservation of peace,
decided to send an expedition from India under the command of
Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Napier, the Commander-in-Chief of the
Bombay Army. After carefully considering the distance along which
operations would have to be prosecuted, and the necessity for holding
a number of detached posts, Napier gave it as his opinion that the
force should consist of not less than 12,000 men.[1]

Profiting by the experience of the Crimean War, the Government was
determined that the mobility of the force should not be hampered by
want of food and clothing. Stores of all descriptions were despatched
in unstinted quantities from England, and three of the steamers in
which they were conveyed were fitted up as hospital ships. But food,
clothing, and stores, however liberally supplied, would not take the
army to Magd[=a]la without transport.

The question as to the most suitable organization for the Land
Transport Corps occupied a good deal of Sir Robert Napier's attention
while the expedition was being fitted out, and caused a considerable
amount of correspondence between him and the Bombay Government. The
Commissary-General wished to keep the corps under his own orders, and
objected to its being given an entirely military organization. Sir
Robert Napier preferred to establish the corps on an independent
basis, but was at first overruled by the Bombay Government. While
act