advantage, therefore, of it that you can within reason, and up to a
certain extent, there being of course always a limit to all good
things.

Tents are a great and important feature in any long campaign. I don't
hesitate to say that the single canvas bell tent as supplied to the
British Forces, should be at once converted into double canvas tents.
In the many long sweltering days when the Natal Field Force before
Colenso, and later at Elandslaagte, were forced to lie doing nothing,
the heat of the sun coming through the tent was very bad; one was
always obliged to wear a helmet inside one's tent; and I think in the
men's tents (ours with, say, ten in them, and the military who had, I
am told, up to fifteen in one tent) the state of things was abominably
unhealthy under the blazing South African sun, and I am persuaded that
half the sickness among the forces was due to this insufficient
protection from the sun. The double canvas bell tent with air space in
between the two parts does very well, in both keeping heat and cold
off. The Indian tents, of khaki canvas, double and generally
square-shaped, are much the best ones we saw on the Natal side and
should be used generally in the Army; the extra expense would be saved
in the end by prevention of fever and sunstroke.

My own experience (when I and three other officers lay in a field
hospital outside Ladysmith just after the relief, in a single bell
tent, and saw Tommies all around us crowded into these tents with
fever and dysentery, whereby all our cases, I am sure, were made much
worse by the torturing sun which poured in all day on our heads),
makes me very glad that the "Hospital Commission" is now sitting, and
I sincerely hope that such absurd mistakes will be noticed and
corrected by them for the good of the whole British Forces.

Regarding the Mauser rifle, as compared with the Lee-Metford, I
personally have little experience, but I can only say that the Mauser
to hold and carry is much the better balanced of the two, and that the
fine sighting is superior. Also some military officers seem to say it
is a better shooter at long ranges, and its magazine action is far
quicker and superior.[9] Revolvers, as far as I know, have had no test
at all in this war. The cavalry carbine, I believe, is universally
condemned by all cavalry officers out here, and is doomed to go I
hope, being, if used against foes with modern weapons, only waste
lumber.

[Footnote 9: