DETERIORATION OF THE HORSE IN ENGLAND 37 



from which some day there may be a rude awaken- 

 ing.' Colenso ! Stormberg ! Magersfontein ! Were 

 they not a rude awakening ? He regrets that the 

 advice of Captain Nolan, of Balaclava fame, was 

 ' for the most part unheeded, and cavalry regiments 

 lapsed more and more into the hands of the dandies 

 and the barrack square martinets . . . fine gentle- 

 men who never identified themselves with their 

 men.' These, I suppose, are the gentlemen who 

 had the selection of the horses for Omdurman, 

 which had to be left behind at Cairo, some of 

 them probably the ' dandies ' of Captain Upton. 



Mr. G. W. Steevens, in his book * With Kitchener 

 to Khartoum,' in describing the start of the British 

 Egyptian army at five in the morning to ride forth 

 to Omdurman, says that at the first glance the 

 British cavalry looked less like horsemen than like 

 Christmas-trees. What made the likeness to Christ- 

 mas-trees was the fearful loads they were carrying, 

 and which he enumerates : ' picketing pegs lashed to 

 carbines, feeds of corn hanging from saddles, canvas 

 buckets opposite them, waterproofs behind bulky 

 holsters, in front bundles of this thing and that 

 dangling here and there, water-bottles in nets under 

 the horses' bellies, khaki neck-screens flapping from 

 helmets '; and then he continues : ' The smallest 

 Syrian — they had left their own big hungry chargers 

 in Cairo — had to carry 18 stone ; with a heavy man 

 the weight was well over 20.' That is not quite 

 so much as was carried by the Barbs of the French 



