the numbers
transported would in any case be a weighty and troublesome task, but
it has been rendered doubly so by the scanty resources of the scenes
of war, by the terrible horse-sickness, and by the length of the
voyage, which enfeebles the animals in a proportion ever increasing
with the passage of the days. The evil becomes yet greater from the
pressing needs at the front, and the importunate urgency to hasten the
animals forward, over a railroad journey of hundreds of miles, without
first giving them time to regain the fulness of their strength.

The importance and embarrassing nature of this factor in the campaign
are hard to overestimate. The insufficient number of horses and their
debility have doubtless accounted {p.098} for much of the delay and
seeming languor of action, which has appeared otherwise inexplicable;
the utter weakness of the poor beasts having indeed been expressly
alleged as the reason for failure of cavalry or of artillery in more
than one critical moment. That the supply forwarded has been large, if
nevertheless falling short of the demand, is shown by the transport
figures, according to which, in round numbers, 50,000 horses and
39,000 mules had been shipped by the end of March. Half of the former,
and the greater part of the latter, were drawn from North and South
America, from Australia, and from the Mediterranean. To these figures
is to be added another, yet uncertain because future, but which, when
ascertained, will probably double the number of horses and mules
actually used in the war, raising it, including those obtained in
South Africa itself, to nearly 200,000. The monthly waste has been
roughly reckoned at 5,000.

The size and multiplicity of these various operations enforce the
homely, but always to be remembered, maxim that "War is business," and
that in all its aspects; business in {p.099} which, like every other,
the aim must be the best results with the least expenditure--of money,
of labour, and of life. An intermediate difficulty in the problem of
getting men, horses, and supplies from England to the front of
operations, and one which probably would not antecedently occur to a
person inexperienced in such transactions, was the inadequate
facilities at Cape Town itself, as well as of the railroads, for
handling the mass of freight, animate and inanimate, unexpectedly
thrust upon them. A third-class port cannot be suddenly raised to the
business of one of the first class, an