MILITARY EXPEDITIONS INTO WILD LANDS. 57 



is the capacity for exercising this discretion aright 

 which constitutes the true "Art of Travel." That it 

 is perfectly possible to secure these results under a 

 proper system of management, even when directing 

 the march of large bodies of men, under the stress of 

 actual warfare, is conclusively proved by the results 

 of several of our recent military expeditions. 



British officers are now all of them highly trained, 

 and often exceedingly scientific soldiers ; and probably 

 few people will be disposed to deny, without in the 

 slightest degree depreciating the merits of our com- 

 manders in former days, that these recent triumphs 

 are largely to be attributed to the judicious arrangements 

 made for these expeditions, and the higher standard 

 of education maintained among the officers of the 

 present day over their predecessors of a generation 

 or two ago. The older commanders acted according 

 to their lights, and the state of knowledge of the times 

 they lived in. The modern expeditions to which refer- 

 ence is made, are, ist, the Abyssinian Campaign and 

 march to Magdala, under the late Lord Napier, in 

 1867 8; 2ndly, the Red River expedition to Fort 

 Garry, under Lord Wolseley, in 1870; and 3rdly the 

 Ashanti War and expedition to Coomassie, under the 

 same commander, in 1873.* In each of these cases, the 

 difficulties to be surmounted proceeded from the climate, 

 and the Wilderness. In both the African expeditions 

 the climatic dangers were of course, heat, and malarial 

 fever; while in that to Fort Garry it was the advent 

 of the snows of winter and the general inclemency of 



* Since these lines were written a second march to Coomassie has 

 been performed in the early part of 1896, with equal success, under Maj.- 

 Gen. Sir Francis Scott. 



