by the senior officers, who had
all entered the service in the days of 'Brown Bess.' Some of them had
failed to note the remarkable alteration which the change from
the musket to the rifle necessitated in the system of musketry
instruction, or to study the very different conditions under which
we could hope to win battles in the present day, compared with those
under which some of our most celebrated victories had been won. It
required time and patience to inspire officers with a belief in the
wonderful shooting power of the Martini-Henry rifle, and it was even
more difficult to make them realize that the better the weapon, the
greater the necessity for its being intelligently used.

I had great faith in the value of Camps of Exercise, and
notwithstanding the difficulty of obtaining an annual grant to defray
their cost, I managed each year, by taking advantage of the movement
of troops in course of relief, to form small camps at the more
important stations, and on one occasion was able to collect 9,000
men together in the neighbourhood of Bangalore, where the
Commanders-in-Chief in India and of Bombay (Sir Donald Stewart and the
Hon. Arthur Hardinge) were present--the first and last time that
the 'three Chiefs' in India met together at a Camp of Exercise. The
Sappers and Miners were a brilliant exception to the rest of the
Madras Army, being indeed a most useful, efficient body of men, but
as no increase to that branch was considered necessary, I obtained
permission to convert two Infantry regiments into Pioneers on the
model of the Pioneer Corps of the Bengal Army, which had always
proved themselves so useful on service. Promotion amongst the British
officers was accelerated, recruits were not allowed to marry, or, if
married, to have their wives with them, and many other minor changes
were made which did much towards improving the efficiency of the
Native portion of the Madras Army; and I hope I was able to increase
the comfort and well-being of the British portion also by relaxing
irksome and useless restrictions, and by impressing upon commanding
officers the advisability of not punishing young soldiers with the
extreme severity which had hitherto been considered necessary.

I had been unpleasantly struck by the frequent Courts-Martial on the
younger soldiers, and by the disproportionate number of these lads to
be met with in the military prisons. Even when the prisoners happened
to be of some length of service,