SADDLERY AND SORE BACKS. 
507 
the only means that I can see is to have the saddles of sufficient size and a 
blanket of sufficient dimensions to enable the blanket to circumvent them. 
As regards the matter of sore backs, I would like to mention a thing which I 
tried on two different occasions. When my battery, a Field Battery, was placed 
under orders to join General Stewart’s column and go to Candaliar, it meant a 
matter of hundreds of miles march over sand which was so deep that we used to 
have to call out a half battery at a time, take out its leaders and centre horses 
and place them in front of the other leaders and move the guns like that; and 
yet after marching up through the Bhow land we arrived at Candaliar with 
almost a total absence of sore backs. What I tried was what I had seen done 
by an old line orderly, as he is called in India, a man who had had vast experience 
when such things as stables were unknown out there, and that was sopping the 
horses’ backs and shoulders with salt and water day by day under the' super¬ 
vision of the salootri, and it had a most excellent result. When my battery 
(which I gave over when I was promoted) was leaving Kawul Pindi to embark 
upon the first large cavalry camp held under General Luck in India, with the 
prospect of several hundred miles march from Bawul Pindi to Umballa after that, 
and with the prospect of another cavalry camp when I got to Umballa, I tried 
the same thing and found exactly the same result. I do not know whether 
Colonel Walters has ever had any experience of that kind of treatment or not. 
I thoroughly agree with what he said about the treatment of sore backs, be¬ 
cause I happened at one time to be with my battery (I had been away on six 
weeks’ leave) and the battery had received a new lot of saddlery and we were 
going on a long march. I do not know what it was that had happened, but all 1 
know is that I was in charge of the horses, and had a great deal of experience of 
sore backs along that march. And I would impress upon every officer present the 
particular point which Colonel Walters has brought to our notice to-night as 
regards opening sores. A sore which is on a top surface like a horse’s back 
requires to be particularly open so that it drains itself. If it does not do that 
(and I do not think Colonel Walters mentioned this point) if you open the sore 
perhaps a little too high the lower part of the sore does not discharge, and instead 
of the thing curing it spreads. And there is another thing I must say about 
this curing of sore backs. I have not had any experience except in India, but I 
used to find that one of the best methods of treating almost any sore out there 
was hot water, plain and simple. I have seen a thing out there (I do not know 
whether it is a feature of horse ailments in other parts of the world, but I dare¬ 
say Colonel Bussell knows it well, it is a common thing in India) that is sore 
corners to mouths ; you see a horse with a large indurated sore at the corner of 
his mouth. I have seen every kind of thing tried for it, this kind of powder 
and that, and at last a Veterinary Surgeon came to the place (poor fellow, he is 
dead now—he died of cholera in Afghanistan), and he recommended hot water. 
Hot water was applied, and the sores all began to go away. 
Major W. L. Davidson, B.H.A.—There is one single point that Colone^ 
Walters did not mention in the many instances which he gave of the sources 
of sore backs, and that is the advisability of constantly dismounting men on 
every possible occasion at the smallest possible halt. Colonel Walters alluded to 
the number of sore backs among the cavalry horses in South Africa. I person¬ 
ally had the good fortune to join a battery with colonial horses that had been all 
through the whole of the war before the second portion of the campaign to which 
Colonel Walters alluded, and I saw the horses that came out from England and 
the treatment they received. I do not know whether there are any officers pre¬ 
sent here who remember it, but on one occasion, soon after the English cavalry 
first came on to the field, they were seen (there was no mistake about it) to remain 
mounted in a halt in line for an hour-and-a-half with grass up to their horses’ 
