ual service; and only shows how completely
unfitted are his everyday dress and appointments (though perhaps well
enough adapted to the household troops) for the roughing of a campaign;
particularly such campaigns as he is most likely to be engaged in,
against uncivilised barbarians, under a burning sun, and amidst the
abrading effects of dense and thorny jungles.

"No; if the pipeclay martinets, the gold and tape-lacing tailors of the
army, cannot bring themselves to study utility and comfort a little
more, in the everyday dress of the _working_ part of the army, let them,
at least, when our brave fellows are called upon for such roughing as
that required in the last Kaffir campaign,--let them, I say, safely
deposit all these gingerbread trappings in store; rig out our soldiers
in a fashion that will afford _some_ protection against climate; not
impede the free use of their limbs; and give them a chance of marching
under a broiling sun, without a _coup de soleil_; or of coming out of a
thorny jungle, with some small remnants of clothing on their backs.

"What, with his ordinary dress and accoutrements, was often the result,
to the British soldier, of a Kaffir skirmish in the bush? Seeing his
Hottentot _compagnons d'armes_ dash into the dense thorny covert, and
not wishing to be outdone by these little `black fellows,' he sets its
abrading properties at defiance, and boldly rushes in on their wake.
His progress is, however, soon arrested; an opposing branch knocks off
the tall conical machine curiously balanced, like a milkmaid's pail, on
the top of his head. He stoops down to recover his lost treasure; in so
doing his `pouch-box' goes over his head, his `cross-belts' become
entangled. Hearing a brisk firing all around, and wishing to have a
part in the fun, he makes an effort to get on to the front, but finds
himself most unaccountably held in the obstinate grasp of an unexpected
native foe. The thick-spreading and verdant bush, under which the
`chako' has rolled, is the `_wacht-een-beetje_' and, to his cost, he
feels in his woollen garments the tenacious hold of its hooked claws;
for the more he struggles to get free, the more he becomes entangled in
the thorny web. He now hears `retire' echoing through the adjoining
rocks; and his friends, the `totties,' as they briskly run past, warn
him, in their retreat, that the enemy--who knows right well our
bugle-calls--is at their heels. Exhausted by his protracted strug