again changed to Royal Sappers and Miners.
Some mistrust was occasioned by the alteration;
confidence was, however, soon restored.

Four more years elapsed before this military
class of working-men, long subjected to
drill, was armed. "On one occasion," says
the Quartermaster, " near St. Denis, all the
Sappers of the army, nearly a thousand
strong, were assembled to witness an execution,
and strange to add, in that imposing
force, there was not a single firearm. At
another time there was an inspection of the
pontoon-train of eighty pontoons and other
carriages, with horses, drivers, and
pontooners, occupying a line of road nearly two
miles in length. The Sappers were present
in their whole strength, but without a musket
in their ranks to show the quality of
protection they could afford to the immense
charge entrusted to them. Fifty men with
firearms could easily have destroyed the whole
force in ten minutes. These instances, and
others equally striking, occurring in an
enemy's country, were strongly brought
under the notice of the higher powers; but,
where representations and remonstrances
founded on the necessities of the service
failed, accidental circumstances at last
gained the desired object." What it was
impossible to get done for the help of a
war, was done promptly enough for the help
of a show. " At the great reviews in
France, the bridges required for the
passage of the army were thrown the evening
previously, and the Sappers consequently
were free for any other duty. Usually they
were employed to represent the enemy; and,
to show the line of the enemy's pontoon to
advantage it was considered best to effect it
by musketry fire. Orders were therefore
given to supply the companies with firearms:
and, from this trivial incident may be dated
the period, from which the corps was properly
and uniformly armed."

Of the admirable service since done by
the Royal Sappers and Miners in all
climates and many lands—in wars and in
expeditions—Quartermaster John Conolly tells,
bringing his tale down to the siege of Sebastopol,
whereof he has much information to
convey. The quality of their labour we
have already indicated. A fine fellow was
Lance-corporal Greenhill, who in eighteen
'thirty-six was with the exploring party upon
the Euphrates, when the natives marvelled
greatly at his hair, which was white like
silver, while his beard was black as soot.
He was seized by Arab banditti, who tore
the gilt buttons from his coat. One button
remained upon a cuff; and, tearing off his
coat, he threw it at them to be quarrelled over,
while he himself scampered away up the hills.
Greenhill collected ancient coins, which, like
a good Perthshire man, he presented to the
Perth Museum. He became at last a volunteer
to the Niger expedition; for which he set
to work so vigorously about the inuring of
his body, that by exposure and self-denial he
brought on himself erysipelas, and died.

A fine fellow was Corporal Coles, who
endured with Captain Grey, in the deserts of
Western Australia, terrible suffering. When
he had been picked up by a boat, and found
his captain, "Have you a little water?"
asked the captain as he entered. "Plenty,
sir," answered Coles, handing a very little,
that was swallowed eagerly. That drop
of water was all that was in the boat when
Coles was found; and although he suffered
severely from thirst, he would not taste a
drop, as long as he retained any hope that
his chief might be found, and he in want of
it. Brave Corporal Coles, at the end of all
the suffering and labour, by which Captain
Grey and his party were almost destroyed,
was in a dreadful plight. " Corporal Coles,"
the captain wrote, "my faithful and tried
companion in all my wanderings, could
scarcely crawl along. The flesh was
completely torn away from one of his heels
and the irritation caused by this, had
produced a large swelling in the groin. Nothing
but his own strong fortitude, aided by the
encouragement given him by myself and his
comrades, could have made him move under
his great agony." He was then walking for
his life, twenty- one miles in the day, under a
fierce sun, without food, or water, to sleep at
night in the darkness, under drenching rain,
and rise next morning to resume his toil.
Then we may read in the Quartermaster's
book, of Sappers attached to an Arctic
expedition, making soup of their boots boiled with
a bit of buffalo grease. Running on to the
year eighteen hundred and fifty-one, we find
the Sappers constituting an important and
most interesting feature of the human
machinery connected with the Great Exhibition,
and passing over the sapping and mining
work done at the Chobham Camp we come
to the great siege of Sebastopol, whereat what
work was done by the Royal Sappers and
Miners, the Quartermaster industriously
laboured to make out from many private
sources.

We have said nothing of General Colby's
classes for the training of men up to the
highest state of efficiency in execution of the
national surveys. Of the twenty-two
companies into which the present number of
two thousand six hundred and fifty-five Sappers
and Miners of all ranks is divided, four
are set apart for the duties of the national
surveys. The number of officers upon the
survey has been reduced from forty-five to
nine. Nevertheless, the men are so efficient,
that they can be safely intrusted with the
charge of difficult and important works;
concerning which they cannot always receive
directions from officers.

We have not yet accepted the whole lesson
taught us by the admirable result of
the introduction of mechanics, as constituent
members of the British Army. It has been