inured to its rays in every part of Hindostan,
I could not have done without a white turban
around my felt wide-awake. But the heads of
the Zouaves seemed never to feel the heat.
The only head-dress they wore was a small red
fess, or tarboosh or skull-cap: their green
turbans being unwound and packed up in their
knapsacks, only to be worn on Sundays. I
found that, even through the sandy deserts of
the interior of Algeria, the Zouaves wear no
other head-dress, and yet that amongst these
troops sunstroke is almost unknown: whereas
the soldiers of the line, who have peaks to their
caps, suffer in Africa often and most severely,
from the fearful effects of the sun. The Zouaves
themselves account for this—and I believe the
medical men of the French, army are of their
opinion—by reason of their necks being left
entirely uncovered from the collar-bone
upward, and thus a free circulation of blood to
and from the brain being maintained.

Although conscripts, or recruits who have
only just ioined the service, are sent to the
Zouaves, the greater number of these troops
are men who have already served the regulated
seven years (the term for which every Frenchman
who cannot buy a substitute has to soldier), and
have volunteered for a further and longer term.
In fact, they are mostly men who have adopted
the profession of arms for the active years of
their lives, and not simply in order to get over
the term for which by law they must shoulder a
musket. A Zouave who has some education
and behaves steadily, is pretty certain to obtain
his promotion to the rank of officer, in eight or
ten years; but, unfortunately, the Zouave
conduct is not always that which a member of the
temperance society would consider correct.
The Zouave, as a general rule, drinks largely
of strong waters whenever he has money, or
credit, or friends. Still a large proportion of
the Zouave officers—I believe about two-thirds
—are men who while yet young have risen from
the ranks in their own corps, and are gentlemen
by birth and education, although inferior
in birth to their comrades of the Chasseurs
d'Afrique. There appears to be a peculiarly
kindly feeling between the officers and men of the
Zouaves: though the former are often obliged
to have recourse to very severe punishment.
The Zouaves on parade are as smart as any
soldiers in the world, each one deeming that
the credit of the whole body depends on his
individual exertions. But they have sometimes
a way of mounting sentry with their rifles slung
by the belt over their shoulders, their hands in
their capacious breeches-pockets, and a slouching
gait, which would drive any smart English
adjutant out of his wits. The French troops
have in all minor matters a want of what we
call "smartness," and a degree of slovenliness,
most astonishing in an army which takes so
much real pride in its work.

The Zouaves use the Minié rifle with sword
and bayonet: from what I have seen of their
shooting, I should say that their practice is very
good.

Every man carries a large blanket rolled up
over his knapsack, as well as the sticks and canvas
of a fourth part of a tent d'abris. This, with
his regular kit, his spare ammunition, his share
of cooking vessels, and four days' provisions,
brought the weight each soldier carried in the
Lebanon last summer, up to no less than eighty-five
pounds English measure, or twenty-five
pounds more than an English infantry soldier
carries in heavy marching order. Yet, as I
said before, these men made nothing of their
loads, but walked up and down the impossible
paths and break-neck roads of Lebanon, as easily
as one of our Guardsmen moves along Pall-mall.
Always laughing at difficulties, making the least
of annoyances, and improving every opportunity
of adding something to their next meal, the
Zouaves appeared to flourish where other troops
met with nothing but difficulties. I remember
one morning last autumn, during my wanderings
in the Lebanon, coming across General Beaufort
de Hautpoul, the Commander of the French
expedition, who, with merely five officers of his
personal staff, and an escort of a few cavalry and
a hundred Zouaves, was visiting some of the
forts in the mountains. When I fell in with the
party of officers they were bivouacking under
some large olive-trees, intending to move further
in the afternoon. The general kindly asked me
to partake of their breakfast, which, although
good in its way, consisted merely of cold meat,
sausage, and bread. Not so the Zouave escort,
which, but a few paces off, had managed to light
fires and cook sundry messes; and if they
tasted half as well as they smelt, they must have
been right good to eat. The cavalry of the
escort appeared to have nothing save their
ration biscuits and coffee.

The Chasseurs d'Afrique and the Zouaves
were both experiments in the French army, and
have no doubt proved highly successful. Could
not something of the kind be tried for our vast
Indian empire, and even in our Cape colony?
Had we regiments like these, in which, if a
young man of fair education were to enlist,
he would know that if he behaved well and
steadily his promotion to the rank of a
commissioned officer would only be a question of
time, would it not go far to fill our local Indian
regiments with a better class of men than those
who have lately been creating miserable mutinies
in Bengal? Would such corps not prove an
outlet for a vast deal of the young and wild
blood, which at present is somewhat of an
incubus on too many families of the middle and
upper middle classes of society? I am aware
that even as it is many of our young men who
have come to temporary social grief, do enlist
in the army, and chiefly in India. I have seen
a nobleman's son serving as a private gunner in
the Bengal Horse Artillery, and I had some
years ago in my own troop of dragoons two men
who had taken their B.A. degrees at Cambridge.
But in our service such men almost
invariably go from bad to worse, and, in nine cases
out of ten, end their lives in the hospital from
delirium tremens. One reason is, that they have