264 
MOUNTAIN ARTILLERY ESTABLISHMENTS, ETC. 
drivers in Natal being taken by tbe Cape drivers at present on the 
Battery establishment there. Batteries to equip four mountain guns. 
The Companies to be designated by the letter “ M ” against their num¬ 
ber in the Regimental List. The Battery at home only to train men 
for the Batteries on the permanent establishment in India, and to be 
available for active service there, or in connection with any European 
war or home defence. 
Training. 
The drills of a Mountain Artilleryman may be dealt with under two 
headings : Artillery and Subsidiary. 
Artillery Drills .—“ Field Artillery Drill, 1893,” for principles, and 
“Mountain Artillery Drill, 1891 ” (in the Press in India), for details, 
should constitute the text-book for artillery drills for all batteries of 
the branch. At present a young soldier on joining his battery in 
India has to commence his artillery drills by unlearning what he has 
been taught at the depot, owing to there being a distinct drill-book 
for batteries home and colonial from that for those on the Indian estab¬ 
lishment. Any little differences in drill and equipment due to locality 
need only be small, and could be noted in the text of the book being 
published in India. Indeed, the difference in organisation and equip¬ 
ment, &c., between the batteries on our two establishments need be much 
smaller, than that which exists between the “ Mountain Batteries of 
the Alps ” and the “Mountain Batteries of Algeria.” Yet there is 
only one drill-book published for these two establishments, in which 
distinctions are noted in the text-book for Mountain Artillery in France. 
Subsidiary Drills .—Like all other artillerymen, the Mountain gunner 
has to learn a certain fixed number of drills as a soldier, prior to, or 
concurrent with, those of a gunner, viz.:—Recruits, marching, carbine, 
and sword drills, &c. These as a Garrison gunner he has been taught 
in accordance with the “ Infantry Drill Book.” On joining the Moun¬ 
tain Artillery—also a dismounted branch—officers and men are supposed 
to study the “ Cavalry Drill Book,” for instruction in military equita¬ 
tion, instruction on foot, movement by fours, cavalry sword and Martini- 
Metford carbine exercises. 
Now the six or seven so-called mounted men, with the two senior 
sergeants (who may on occasions have to act as staff sergeants on 
parade) should of course, have some knowledge of riding their cobs. 
But the nature of their duties, their training and physique, scarcely neces¬ 
sitates their instruction being conducted on so elaborate a scale as that 
laid down for the mounted branches of the regiment. They are only 
mounted for purposes of supervision, and to enable them to perform their 
duties after a march with greater energy, and not for purposes of man¬ 
oeuvre. Like the detachments, their physical efficiency is tested by their 
walking rather than by their riding powers. Some slight instruction on 
the parade ground, and the formation of riding parties along the roads 
under the senior subaltern is generally found a sufficient means of 
instruction, supplemented as it often is by “riding school” in the 
“ manege ” of a battery of the mounted branches under the Riding- 
Master’s supervision. The cavalry sword exercise is in India never 
