My Army Life

By Lieut.-Gen. The Earl of Dundonald

This fascinating autobiography charts the military career of Lieut.-Gen. The Earl of Dundonald, a Victorian general of much renown as he himself writes:

“The MS. of these pages was written at various periods. It describes many matters in connection with my life in the Army from Cornet of Horse to Lieutenant-General, including my experiences in the Soudan War for the relief of Khartoum, and the South African War. It also contains a description of service in Canada, where as General Officer Commanding I was engaged in reorganizing the Militia; and it concludes with an account of experiment, observation and development in the utilization of smoke screens during the Great War 1914-1918.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Normanby Press
• Release date: Jan 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9781787203396

Lieut.-Gen. The Earl of Dundonald

Lieutenant General Douglas Mackinnon Baillie Hamilton Cochrane, 12th Earl of Dundonald, KCB, KCVO (29 October 1852 - 12 April 1935), styled Lord Cochrane between 1860 and 1885, was a Scottish representative peer and a British Army general. Cochrane was the second but eldest surviving son of Thomas Cochrane, 11th Earl of Dundonald, by Louisa Harriet Mackinnon, daughter of William Alexander Mackinnon. Thomas Cochrane, 1st Baron Cochrane of Cults, was his younger brother. He was educated at Eton College and commissioned into the Life Guards in July 1870. He was promoted to lieutenant the following year and captain in 1878. He served in the Nile Expedition, the Desert March and the Relief of Khartoum in 1885.He was appointed Commanding Officer of 2nd Life Guards in 1895. He served in the Second Boer War and in November 1899 he was appointed Commander of the Mounted Brigade, part of the South Natal Field Force. He took part in the Relief of Ladysmith in February 1900, although his South African troops, unimpressed by his leadership, referred to him as “Dundoodle”. In April 1902, it was announced that Lord Dundonald would be appointed General Officer Commanding the Militia of Canada, the senior military officer in Canada. He left Liverpool on 15 July, and arrived in Quebec the following month to take up his position. He served in Canada for two years. He was appointed a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO) in December 1901, and in June 1907 knighted as a Knight Commander (KCVO) of the order. He later served in the First World War as Chairman of the Admiralty Committee on Smoke Screens in 1915. Lord Dundonald died at his home in Wimbledon in April 1935, aged 82, and was succeeded in the earldom by his eldest son, Thomas. He is buried in Achnaba Churchyard, Ardchattan near Benderloch, Lorne, Argyll & Bute. Dundonald Park, in Centretown, Ottawa, is named after him.

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Text originally published in 1926 under the same title.

© Pickle Partners Publishing 2016, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

MY ARMY LIFE

BY

LIEUT.-GENERAL THE EARL OF DUNDONALD, K.C.B., K.C.V.O.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

PREFATORY NOTE 4

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 5

CHAPTER I — FAMILY HISTORY AND EARLY LIFE 15

CHAPTER II — GORDON RELIEF EXPEDITION, 1884 28

CHAPTER III — BATTLES OF ABU KLEA AND GUBAT 38

CHAPTER IV — FALL OF KHARTOUM 49

CHAPTER V — AFTER THE SOUDAN CAMPAIGN 61

CHAPTER VI — REGIMENTAL AND OTHER EXPERIENCES 64

CHAPTER VII — COMMANDING THE 2ND LIFE GUARDS 70

CHAPTER VIII — OUTBREAK OF SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 77

CHAPTER IX — BATTLE OF COLENSO 87

CHAPTER X — SECOND AND THIRD ADVANCES ON  LADYSMITH 96

CHAPTER XI — RELIEF OF LADYSMITH 113

CHAPTER XII — CLEARING NORTHERN NATAL 124

CHAPTER XIII — FIGHTING IN THE TRANSVAAL 130

CHAPTER XIV — CAVALRY REFORM, MACHINE GUNS, AND OTHER MATTERS 142

CHAPTER XV — ARRIVAL IN CANADA 148

CHAPTER XVI — A TOUR OF INSPECTION 154

CHAPTER XVII — CANADIAN MILITIA PROBLEMS 160

CHAPTER XVIII — REPORT TO THE MINISTER OF MILITIA 165

CHAPTER XIX — REGIMENTAL AFFILIATION SCHEME 170

CHAPTER XX — SOME CAMP INSPECTIONS 175

CHAPTER XXI — VISIT TO EASTERN PROVINCES 178

CHAPTER XXII — VARIOUS MILITIA MATTERS 184

CHAPTER XXIII — TOUR IN THE NORTH-WEST 187

CHAPTER XXIV — CITIZEN ARMY SCHEME 197

CHAPTER XXV — DIFFICULTIES AS G.O.C. 201

CHAPTER XXVI — THE DUNDONALD INCIDENT, 1904 206

CHAPTER XXVII — FAREWELL GATHERINGS 213

CHAPTER XXVIII — LAST DAYS IN CANADA 223

CHAPTER XXIX — RETURN TO ENGLAND, 1904 233

CHAPTER XXX — VISIT TO THE WEST INDIES 239

CHAPTER XXXI — WORK FOR EX-SERVICE MEN 246

CHAPTER XXXII — DIGRESSIONS, 1910-1913 252

CHAPTER XXXIII — THE GREAT WAR 257

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 267

PREFATORY NOTE

The MS. of these pages was written at various periods. It describes many matters in connection with my life in the Army from Cornet of Horse to Lieutenant-General, including my experiences in the Soudan War for the relief of Khartoum, and the South African War. It also contains a description of service in Canada, where as General Officer Commanding I was engaged in reorganizing the Militia; and it concludes with an account of experiment, observation and development in the utilization of smoke screens during the Great War 1914-1918.

DUNDONALD.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE AUTHOR IN 1926

BATTLE OF ABU KLEA. By Melton Prior

THE AUTHOR IN 1902

FAREWELL SCENIC AT MONTREAL

A SMOKE SCREEN

MY ARMY LIFE

CHAPTER I — FAMILY HISTORY AND EARLY LIFE

I was born on 29 October, 1852, at Auchentoul House, Banff, Scotland. On my father’s side the Earldom of Dundonald had been conferred upon the family for the part taken by the first Earl in restoring the Royal House of Stuart to the throne, in whose cause he raised a regiment.

Sir John Cochrane of Ochiltree, the younger son of the first Earl, from whom we descend, took part in Monmouth’s Rebellion in Scotland as second in command under Argyll; he was taken prisoner and sentenced to death, and with a hangman’s rope round his neck was paraded through the streets of Edinburgh, and according to a contemporary account withal he steppit with stately paw. Sir John’s heroic daughter Grizel, having dressed herself in men’s clothes, waylaid the messenger from the south with the death-warrant; Lord Dundonald meanwhile, it is recorded, bribed the King’s Confessor and obtained his son’s reprieve.

To escape imprisonment many cadets of the family, who had taken part in the Rebellion, emigrated to America in a ship Sir John had chartered; he intended to form one of the party who were leaving Scotland for ever, but before he embarked was captured. So my ancestor was near to becoming an American citizen.

Many members of my family served under Gustavus Adolphus in Sweden, and in the Scots Hollander regiment in Holland, and after the union between England and Scotland several rose in the Navy to high rank and important commands during our wars.

My mother’s family were the MacKinnon of the Isle of Skye, an almost entirely military family, which included among its members the gallant General MacKinnon who lost his life leading the assault on Badajoz, and Colonel Dan MacKinnon of the Coldstream Guards, who did such good work in the defence of Hougoumont. My mother’s brother, also in the Coldstreams, was killed at Inkerman.

The MacKinnons were a very hardy race, and when ordinary people were frozen to death they would feel comfortably warm. My grandfather, MacKinnon of MacKinnon, was typical of this hardy Highland race. Notwithstanding that he had been a member of Parliament for forty years, he never wore a greatcoat in his life, and never wore flannel, but only a linen shirt with a washable yellow holland waistcoat, and I never saw him out of a thin black cloth coat or without a high hat.

He came to stay with us, and at night my father said, Go and see your grandfather to bed and perhaps you will see him pickle himself. I went with him into his bedroom, a room without any fire although it was mid-winter; there was no central heating in country houses in those days. His bath, of cold water which froze in the night, was set out ready for him in the morning. He took his clothes off, put two handfuls of salt in a basin, poured water on the salt, and then rubbed himself with it. I can see him now with his nightshirt clinging to him all wet, he then jumped into bed, saying, This is the way, my boy, to make men. He was then 83 years of age.

The Cochranes came from the west of Scotland, a part of that country which has contributed so many men of science to the nation. My great-grandfather, the 9th Earl, when he left the Navy, devoted himself to scientific pursuits and impoverished our estate in carrying out his ideas. In the annual address of the Registrars of the Literary Society in 1823 we read:

A man born in the high class of the old British Peerage has devoted his acute and investigating mind solely to the prosecution of science; and his powers have prevailed in the pursuit. The discoveries effected by his scientific research, with its direction altogether to utility, have been in many instances beneficial to the community, and in many have been the sources of wealth to individuals. To himself alone they have been unprofitable; for with a superior disdain, or (if you please) a culpable disregard of the goods of fortune, he has scattered around him the produce of his intellect with a lavish and wild hand. If we may use the consecrated words of an Apostle, though poor he has made many rich.

His book on The Connection between Agriculture and Chemistry was published in 1795—eighteen years before Elements of Agricultural Chemistry by Sir Humphry Davy appeared. He also took out patents for the manufacture of alkali, and for making tar, pitch, gas, etc., from coal in 1781, but in his day nobody would use the tar.

My grandfather, Admiral Lord Dundonald, the 10th Earl, also was the author of many inventions of use to the country. In 1817 he superintended the construction of the first steam vessel which entered the Pacific Ocean, the Rising Star, for the use of the Chilean Navy.

Of my father’s brothers, two served in the Navy during the Crimean War and in China, and one rose to the command of a British Fleet; another brother served in a Highland Regiment.

My father, the 11th Earl, first saw service as a child when his father—then Lord Cochrane—was fighting for the Independence of Chile and Peru in 1817. When the Chilean flagship was in action against the defences of Callao, a round shot took off the head of a marine close to my father, in whose face the unlucky man’s brains were scattered. The child ran to my grandfather and said, They have killed poor Jack! All the comfort he got was: Put your head in the hole the shot made and stay there, no shot will ever come through the same hole again.

My father afterwards entered the Navy and then the Army, in the 18th Royal Irish Regiment in which there were many Scotch officers. As he was fond of hunting and sport of all sorts he got into debt in consequence. In those days no one was allowed to leave the country who was in debt. In order to go out to China with his regiment he was cooped up in a barrel and taken in a cart with the company’s equipment under escort of his own men to the docks; not one of those loyal Irishmen gave him away. The barrel was then hauled on board ship, where he was safe, and landed in China with his regiment which he told me had paraded 1,000 bayonets strong for embarkation.

He always told me with pride of the fighting qualities of the 18th, and how at the assault of a position the General sent the order to the regiments in front: Open out and let the 18th through!

In the eight years of my father’s service in China he told me that the regiment was buried twice over, lives being lost largely from malarial fever from which he himself suffered to the end of his days. I can see him now, strong man as he was, with his hands all white from ague.

Later on he served in the Canadian Rebellion. He was very happy in Canada and made many friends, even amongst the rebels.

Having given this short account of my forbears, I will now relate my own early experiences. I and my brother and sisters were all brought up very strictly as children: on Sundays no books allowed except religious books, all those on week-days very carefully selected. No theatres were allowed: until I went into the Army I had never entered a theatre.

I was always fond of mechanical pursuits and machinery, and had a great wish to join the Royal Navy, but my father and mother were against it. They said the Cochranes had suffered in losses of property at home from having been so much at sea, and they thought it would be far better that the future head of the family should serve in the Army. However, they agreed that I should go down to Portsmouth to see Admiral Sir Thomas Cochrane, who was then Port Admiral. Sir Thomas, having been well primed beforehand, did all he could to dissuade me from entering the Navy, and at last, being only a child, I gave in to my father’s and mother’s wishes.

I was then sent to a private school at Walton-on-Thames; this school was conducted in a very old-fashioned way, and hardships which would not now be permitted were endured by all the boys. For breakfast at 8 we had nothing but a mug of skimmed milk and water, and they brought round a clothes-basket full of slices of half-baked bread without butter. This was all the boys had for breakfast and until dinner at 1 o’clock, unless something was purchased from a poor little shop. If a boy had anything sent him from home, he would be asked to breakfast with the master and be given a little of his own ham, or whatever it was, which he never saw again. When a boy was called up to say his lesson, often and often I saw the headmaster give him a whack on one side of the head, and as the boy was falling, bring him up with a whack on the other side. This treatment made the boys cruel; I remember I was horrified the second day I was there at the fate of an unfortunate cat, which was literally torn to pieces by the boys.

I learnt very little at this school, and was sent from there to Eton, knowing very little and hating Latin and Greek, probably because I had heard my father say that these languages would be of little use to me in after life. This was before the Army class was instituted.

When I was 16 I left Eton to prepare for the Army, which I entered by competitive examination the following year at the age of 17, my cousin Sir Roger Palmer, Colonel of the 2nd Life Guards, having obtained a commission for me in his regiment. Those were the days of purchase in the Army, my commission as Cornet and Sub-Lieutenant cost £1,260, higher ranks mounting up to thousands; so in those days the officers of the Army practically served for nothing but a fair interest on the money they had invested, but any step in rank caused by death in action or otherwise was filled by the next senior who paid nothing for his promotion. These were the chances for poor men. In connection with this, my father told me that in China often the toast at mess was: Gentlemen, here’s to a bloody war and a sickly season!

After paying £1,260 for my commission I had to buy two chargers, furniture and equipment. The pay I received was 8s. a day; out of this, or rather not out of it, I had to keep one batman, one civilian groom, and pay coach subscription, mess subscription, band subscription, and many other subscriptions, besides living.

One day I was Cornet with the Guard of Honour, with my new shabraque of gold, it all looked very nice, when two men, very self-assured but very ignorant, stepped a little out of the crowd and looked me over from head to foot, horse and all, and then one man said to the other, looking at my shabraque and all its new gold, This is what we are taxed for, this is what we have paid for. I said, I am glad, my dear sir, to hear you have paid for it, for I have not! Amongst those who heard the remark there was much merriment.

Sir Roger Palmer sent a list of the tradesmen from whom I was to get my kit, and a goodly as well as a costly assemblage it all was, but I will say this for it, the articles of clothing, etc., seemed to last for ever, and I always think of these in connection with the excellence of British manufacture. I will give an instance. My jack-boots, which I got at Thomas’ in St. James’s Street in 1870 when I was 17 years of age, I wore in 1914 when acting as Gold Stick in Waiting to the King, and they look as well now as when they were made nearly forty-nine years ago. One expects the steel of a helmet or cuirass to last, but not the leather of a jack-boot, but the fact is as I have stated.

Accustomed to a simple style of life at home, I never could reconcile myself to all the varieties of covering for my poor mortal body invented by the ingenuity and the vanity of man. For regimental use there was Full Dress—cuirass, tunic, helmet, jack-boots, white breeches. For Field Days—booted overalls, and stable jacket, later Hessians and breeches. Then there was a patrol jacket and a frock-coat and overalls, mess-waistcoat at dinner,—and those Hessian boots with thin soles and smart-looking uppers, how tight they often were! I remember the orderly-room corporal telling me, a week after we went to manoeuvres, that he had never had his boots off since we started, for if he had taken them off he would never have got them on again!

Then for plain clothes there were black evening suits,—London clothes, country clothes, shooting suits, hunting clothes and white breeches and hunting boots; and high hats and riding trousers for the Row and many sets of hats, and all had to be faultless.

I remember the first day I went out with the Queen’s Stag Hounds riding off in company with an officer, the son of a man who had risen from a very small position; he kept looking at me and then said after a time, Where on earth did you get those breeches and those boots? I told him,—some country maker; he said, Good Heavens, you should not wear such things! I said, If you are ashamed of riding with me, I’ll ride by myself—and so I did, but I took the hint nevertheless, and got boots and breeches at makers guaranteed to turn the outside of any man within one week into what is called a gentleman. Oh, these changes of clothes and wearing the correct thing! How I hated it all!

I remember one day a young fellow coming across the barrack yard at Regent’s Park Barracks to be interviewed by the Colonel with a view to receiving a commission. He was like me when I joined—evidently covered by a fabric cut out and stitched together by a country tailor. Good Heavens, what an outsider! one man of a group exclaimed. The true outsider, however, was he who judged by outside appearance, so often deceptive and worth nothing.

King Edward was most particular about dress and its exact conformity to pattern. When he became Colonel-in-Chief of the Household Cavalry Regiments, our small forage cap did not please him, as his head was rather large for it, so he sent a German model to be tried and reported on by regiments; we did not like any change, but nevertheless a change in caps was made later, first a Brodrick and later the present service cap, all descended from a German ancestor. But whenever King Edward found fault about dress or the way anything was worn, he did it in such a kindly way that no one ever minded.

When I joined the regiment the men were mostly North Country men, a great many from Cumberland, and splendid men they were. They nearly all wore whiskers, but Colonel Marshall, the new Colonel, introduced shaving and the 2nd Life Guards was the first of the three Household Cavalry Regiments to shave their faces clean, leaving only the moustache. My batman, Robert Wragg, was the left-hand or shortest man in the troop, and he measured 6 feet 1 inch. Colonel Marshall, who was a first-rate officer, realized that horses could not carry these heavy men and do efficient work in the field, and he got permission to reduce the height to 5 feet 10 ½ inches.

I have come across a great many men in my life, but never such a splendid lot of men as the Warrant and Non-commissioned Officers and men of the 2nd Life Guards. Once when Sir George Luck was inspecting us I told him that if necessary the N.C.O.’s could train half a dozen regiments, as so many knew their work from A to Z and had the necessary capacity, manner and word of command to get the work done well and willingly. After calling out different N.C.O.’s selected at random, he told me afterwards I was right, and that he had never seen such an efficient and splendid lot of men.

How came this efficiency 9—it sprang from one man’s genius—Colonel Frederick Marshall, a born soldier and judge of good men. In 1869, in taking over a slack regiment, he selected first-rate men for all the executive posts, and as first-rate men select first-rate men, the chain of ability and competence was in full swing for long afterwards.

A great many men in those days in my troop could neither read nor write and used to make a cross when signing the accounts: 1 lb. of bread, ¾ lb. of meat and 1 lb. of potatoes was the ration,—no jam or bacon and very few extras. Beer was the men’s great stand-by, it was food as well as drink to them, and with a pipe and a pot of ale they were as content as, perhaps more content than, guests at some great banquet.

I remember one morning at the orderly room there was a shuffling noise outside as if someone hesitated about knocking. The Adjutant went out to see who it was. What is it, my man? I heard through the partially closed door, what are you scratching about here for like a — old hen? It appeared that a temperance lecturer wished to hold a meeting. Permission was given, but I fear that his meeting was very sparsely attended; amongst those present were three men who had been ordered to attend, who were under a pledge to the Commanding Officer not to touch drink for two months,—the price paid by them for some offence in which drink had played a not unimportant part.

I do not think that beer ever hurt the men if they were fairly moderate; what did affect some few of them was spirits. One day the Adjutant told the Colonel that a certain man was in the guardroom for assaulting the police, and was still in an excitable state. He was well-known as a violent-tempered man. Don’t see him today, Kornel, said our Surgeon-Major, an Irishman, send him to Hospital, I’ll quiet him. I asked Dr. Kerin what he gave him, and he said, 1 and 2 mixed. These jars so labelled contained the two most powerful medicines in the Pharmacy; the result was that the following morning the man was as quiet as a lamb; but there were very few cases that required this sort of treatment.

I saw no drunkenness amongst the officers,—a pint of light wine, sometimes champagne, at dinner; though two or three never had less than a bottle apiece as regular as clockwork, their health did not seem to suffer. In those days champagne was cheap. On some occasions there was more wine drunk than on others.

As to the men, there was still some drunkenness amongst them, but confined to a few. Whenever there was any extra work to be done, such as moving from one barrack to another, was the time selected by these few for an extra drink. My own good batman was one of these; he would pack up one box, then disappear, then do a little more and again disappear. At the end of the day he was sweating from every pore and was so muddled he had forgotten where things were.

My experience with regard to the drink question is that liquor with high alcoholic content is the cause of much misery, but that wine and beer with low alcoholic content is in most cases beneficial. As regards beer it seems to be the natural food of masses of men and is far preferable to an excess of tea-drinking.

My first experience of riding school will for ever be impressed on my memory. Ride, halt, the Riding Master spurs his horse and rides at a man. You’re like a — pea on a drum. Ride, march, trot, trot out. Quit your stirrups, canter, trot, walk. Ride, halt! He again rides more furiously than ever at the same offender, who is evidently half asleep from the late hour at which he had gone to bed. Turn in,—the man turns his horse in. My dear man, you look like a — Yeoman. Ride, march, bring in the bar,—the same man nearly falls off. The Riding Master again rushes at him. No, he says, I made a mistake, I don’t want to insult the Yeomanry, I beg the Yeomanry’s pardon, I’m sorry for what I said; there’s only one place for you, my man, and that is Regent’s Park Barracks; yes, you’ll do well there, the 1st Life Guards is the place for you and the sooner you go to them the better!

The next day all was well, the man had recovered and the Riding Master said, Very good, very good, you’ll make a 2nd Life Guardsman after all!

After going through the ride another day we formed up facing down the school; then the words Bring in the bar, from the Riding Master. We all got over except one young officer whose horse reared and would not face it. The officer in question fell off. At this moment the rat-tat-tat of a cane upon the door. The Riding Master: Open the door, Corporal Major, speaking to a roughrider. In walks the Colonel. Hullo, what’s this? as he sees the officer brushing the tan off his clothes. Nothing, sir, says the Riding Master, ‘Arse shuk ‘is ‘ed and B— tumbled off! Don’t expect words of sympathy in the riding school, for you won’t get them and it is like Church—you can’t answer back.

The remarks of the Riding Master of the 2nd Life Guards about the 1st Life Guards were, of course, chaff. No doubt the 1st Life Guards Riding Master said much the same of the 2nd Life Guards, probably more; no one was hurt and everyone laughed, but not then, later in the canteen. The stentorian voice, manner and forcible language of the Riding Master had one good effect, and that was to abolish at once any fear the worst rider might have of his horse, for though some few men know no fear, others are by nature timid, but in the minds of these latter there is no room for tw0 species of fear at the same time, and one—that of the Riding Master—completely dominated the situation.

The Regiment and its credit always came first in the thoughts of officers and men. That wonderful sentiment Esprit de corps was deep down in the hearts of all, including the latest joined recruit. Take, for instance, how the men helped a nervous young officer who was undergoing examination as to his proficiency in drill: if the right word did not come to him he could count on the men always helping him through by doing the right thing, even if the command given was wrong, which of course when not quite certain he did not shout!

My first Field Day, my age just 18 years; my Captain, Tell that — Cornet to get in his right place. The Cornet overhears; I am in my right place, sir. Captain: Then, damn you, stay there!

The regiment is advancing at a walk. One hears the Adjutant yell, Put your spurs in your horse, man; keep up, man!—then, in a lower voice, Poor old cup of tea, poor old cup of tea! He rides off looking quite depressed but repeating in an undertone to himself, Lardi da, lardi da, lardi da,—the next moment, however, he returns like a tiger and says in a voice of thunder, Sit down in your saddle, man; give him his head, man.

Then the trumpet sounds, Line to the front, then Trot, then Gallop! The regiment is in line at the gallop, what a beautiful sight it is! Lead straight, shouts the Colonel to the directing Troop Leader; again the Colonel shouts, Damn you, sir, you’re leading away to the right!

Blast you, keep off my horse’s heels, yells a Troop Leader to his front rank. On the regiment sweeps at the gallop, now getting faster and faster. Steady that directing squadron, not so fast, steady, sir, can’t you hear me? shouts the Colonel.

The clatter, the noise of pouch-belts on the cuirasses, drowns almost everything including many not too friendly imprecacations from one man to another as he gets jostled in the ranks. A horse falls, the rear rank horse gallops over both fallen horse and man without touching them.

The trumpet rings out Charge! Away the whole lot go, swords at the engage. This is too much for my young horse, who takes the bit between his teeth and runs clean away far ahead of the regiment. I cannot hold him, for my drawn sword is in my right hand and my arms are tired, the beast has been pulling all the morning. With an effort I turn him and just miss the railings; all the time my jack-boots give no grip; every moment I think I shall be off, horrible idea! I hold on by balance as by a miracle. But the regiment is now halted, and my horse rejoins, covered with a white lather, as quiet as a mouse, but ready on the next Field Day to give me another doing. All is well today anyhow, and back we go to barracks.

Give the men a pot of ale, says the troop officer who blasted the whole front rank for riding over him, and so to stables where we see the horses groomed and cared for. Attention, as the officer enters the stables, followed by Go on with your work. Then you overhear: My — horse is off its feed. Give me that —bucket, Bill. You look round and think what a splendid lot of men. One moment, Blast you, keep off my horse’s heels,—the next some kindly act. Later in the day I take a walk with the Captain who called me a — Cornet.

In those days Cornets always had a sanguinary epithet prefixed to their name and many deserved it—of course not I!—but no one cared. What a glorious lot they were, and what swordsmen,—one sweep of the sword and a sheep was cut in half in our competitions. I saw foreign cavalry later, German and French,—our men would have made mincemeat of them; but the day of the rifle was coming, and the arme blanche and the skill in swordsmanship of the Household Cavalry were destined to yield pride of place in the defence of the country to the repeating rifle and the machine gun.

We had a good lot of horses in the regiment, but some were getting on in years, for at this time, and I believe since their formation, the three Household Cavalry Regiments were horsed by their Colonels, who were allowed by Government only £1,200 a year for this purpose, plus the amount realized by the sale of cast horses, for which, as they were black, there was a great demand for funeral carriages. How these regiments of some 265 horses each were mounted as well as they were on such a small sum per annum was a marvel, but then the old landed class from which our Colonels mostly came were very economical as well as efficient administrators in connection with matters in which they felt a deep interest, and moreover, whenever officers came across a likely horse in their own neighbourhood at a reasonable price, they told the Colonel of it. It was lucky for us that the correct colour for a funeral was black, but, poor horses, it seemed a sad ending to a gay life! That their thoughts were in the past was one day made very clear, for, when passing a funeral, the trumpet sounded the trot, the old black horses in the solemn procession pricked up their ears and showed by their unruly behaviour that they preferred Knightsbridge Barracks to the Cemetery.

We were in camp at Aldershot in 1871 at manoeuvres, and I shall never forget the stampede of horses; something frightened the horses of the 1st Life Guards, then they broke loose and swept like a tornado over our lines, taking most of our horses with them; mad with fright and with a noise like thunder, the mass galloped over and through everything; a good many were killed and many others were drowned in the Canal.

I joined the Army just at the close of the war between France and Germany, and everybody’s mind was then alive to the advantage of learning German and French. I decided to go to Germany and learn German. I remember how annoyed I felt when I got to Berlin and could not make people understand where I wanted to go; I remembered then the old proverb, He who speaks Italian gets to Rome.

My cousin, the late Lord Napier, was an Attaché at the Legation at Berlin. I went to him and he recommended me to Professor Diestel at the University of Jena, where I went. There was an Englishman at the house of the Professor, but, having made up my mind not to speak English, I never spoke to him except in German. I learnt fifty words a day; and a Professor at the University used to walk out with me and another used to visit me and talk German. I thought in German, I spoke in German, I dreamt in German. The result was astonishing progress, and at the end of six weeks I knew enough German to join in any ordinary conversation at table, but it was only done by working sometimes from 8 in the morning till 12 at night, and by concentrating my mind on the one subject. It was time well spent, and shows what concentration of mind can do when one eliminates everything else except the object in view.

An infantry regiment had its mess-room at the Bear Hotel, Jena, where they dined at midday; the officers were friendly to me and I liked them. I also met many professors at the University who asked me to their houses; all were most friendly to the young British officer, —I was then only 19 years of age. None of the officers or the professors ever said one word that showed dislike of Great Britain; on the contrary, they all spoke in a friendly manner, but I well remember one incident showing what was in the German educated mind. I was looking at some maps with Professor Diestel, at whose house I was, and we came across a map of Britain and her colonies and he said, Think—that little spot on the map owns that vast territory; it is too much, and all the best of the world too!

When I returned to Berlin, a day or two under six weeks after I started from there unable to speak a word of German, I dined at the Embassy and, to the astonishment of my cousin and others who knew my former condition of ignorance of the language, was able to enter into all ordinary conversation. Anybody can learn by this method, only concentration is required.

In the winter of 1872 I went to Chile by steamer from Liverpool. The vessel I went in was a boat built for the West Coast, with open sides for cattle traffic, roughly boarded up for the journey out. We met with fearful weather when off Patagonia, and the seas swept the decks and flooded the cabins. A sail was got up to steady the vessel, and as the ship was short-handed, the captain readily accepted help from another passenger and myself as we were both of us accustomed to sailing craft. As he and I and another were hauling at a rope we were swung overboard when the ship gave a sudden roll, another lurch of the ship brought us in, but we were nearly carried away.

The people of Chile were most kind to me. I spent a happy time, and stayed so long that I had no time to go back via the Straits of Magellan, so, though it was mid-winter—in those parts in July—I determined to go across the Andes via the Uspallata Pass to Mendoza and across the Pampas to Buenos Ayres. I found a Chilean who was willing to come with me and we started with two peons and some mules. As a rule there was grain left at the rest-houses for the mules, but alas we found none, and for six days, beyond the first day’s food, the unfortunate mules had nothing. Snow, deep snow everywhere, and not a morsel of food for the poor uncomplaining beasts. I had nothing with me except a thin plaid shawl of MacKinnon tartan given me by my mother before starting and a poncho or blanket with a hole for the head which all South Americans use. Two of our mules perished by falling down the steep sides of a precipice, and often I shut my eyes when passing along some dangerous track where a false step of the mule meant destruction. I thought of my grandmother escaping with my father, then a child of 6, over the Andes when the Spanish Royalists tried to capture her as a hostage, my grandfather being at sea fighting the Spanish forces. One day, crossing a river by a ford, my mule made a false step and I got wet through; the water froze my clothes into boards, and like this I went on for six hours, only to find a hut with a few damp sticks and no furniture except the framework of a bed of hide thongs.

On our way across the Cordillera we passed two muleteers frozen to death,—also a cross erected to a traveller who, I was told, had that year been murdered on the way for some few dollars he had with