the hot weather, and assembles in
Simla two or three weeks later.

During 1887 and 1888 much useful work was got through by the Defence
Committee, and by another Committee which was assembled for the
consideration of all questions bearing upon the mobilization of the
army. As Commander-in-Chief I presided over both, and was fortunate
in being able to secure as my secretaries two officers of exceptional
ability, Lieutenant-Colonel W. Nicholson, R.E., for defence, and
Lieutenant-Colonel E. Elles, R.A., for mobilisation. It was in a great
measure due to Colonel Nicholson's clear-sighted judgment on the many
knotty questions which came before us, and to his technical knowledge,
that the schemes for the defence of the frontier, and for the ports
of Bombay, Karachi, Calcutta, Rangoon and Madras, were carried out so
rapidly, thoroughly and economically as they were;[1] and with regard
to measures for rendering the army mobile, Colonel Elles proved
himself equally capable and practical. The Secretary to Government
in the Military Department, Major-General Edwin Collen, was a
particularly helpful member of the Committees[2] from his intimate
acquaintance with the various subjects which had to be discussed.

If my readers have had the patience to follow in detail the several
campaigns in which I took part, they will have grasped the fact that
our greatest difficulties on all occasions arose from the want of a
properly organized Transport Department, and they will understand
that I was able to make this very apparent when the necessity
for mobilizing rapidly only one Army Corps came to be seriously
considered. We were able to demonstrate conclusively the impossibility
of putting a force into the field, sufficiently strong to cope with a
European enemy, without a considerable increase to the existing number
of transport animals, and without some description of light cart
strong enough to stand the rough work of a campaign in a country
without roads; for it is no exaggeration to say that in the autumn of
1880, when I left Kandahar, it would have been possible to have picked
out the road thence to Quetta, and onward to Sibi, a distance of 250
miles, with no other guide than that of the line of dead animals and
broken-down carts left behind by the several columns and convoys that
had marched into Afghanistan by that route.

Soon after I took over the command of the Army in India, while
voyaging to Burma, I had brought this most pre