The importance of dress depends on the
climate and the man. Galton lays stress on
flannel next the skin – that is to say, flannel
shirts for damp, windy, cold weather, and
coarse calico shirts for fine hot dry wrnther.
A poncho is a very useful garment – better
for horseback than a plaid. A blanket with
a hole in it makes a good poncho. A sheet of
calico saturated in oil makes a waterproof
poncho. Galton and Pallisser agree that a
shooting costume of thick Tweed is the best
for all except tropical countries. Leather,
both breeches and coat, answers well except
in wet climates. Leather overalls, with a
spring to fasten them at one motion, are better
than jack boots, because they may be
unfastened and hung to the saddle when the
traveller wants to run on foot. Galton
strongly recommends braces; why, we don't
know; they are not agreeable in hunting.
About stockings and shoes, Galton and
Mansfield Parkyns differ entirely. Galton
recommends thick woollen socks, and thinks
nothing equal to European shoes, while
Parkyns is all for bare feet; but all must
depend upon the nature of the country to be
trodden. Gordon Gumming wore a wide-
awake hat, secured under his chin, a coarse
linen shirt, sometimes a kilt, sometimes a
pair of lambskin breeches and Cape farmers'
made shoes. He discarded coat, waistcoat,
and neckcloth, and always hunted with bare
arms. Galton wore leather breeches, jack
boots, and a hunting cap. The late General
Sir Charles Napier wore a white hunting
cap, with muslin twisted turban-fashion to
keep off the sun in Scinde. Mansfield
Parkyns went even more bare than Gordon
Cumming; and Parkyns, we must remember,
is a Nottinghamshire gentleman and a
Cantab, therefore early accustomed to
comfort. The following is his own conception
of life in the Abyssinian bush:

"I have more than once," he says, " started
off on an expedition into the wild woods
without even saying where I was going, or
even knowing myself. My dress on these
occasions consisted of a short kilt of nicely-
tanned antelope's hide, a piece of coarse
cotton cloth wrapped round my waist as a
belt by day, and a covering by night, and a
small skin (a wild cat's or jackal's) thrown
over my left shoulder. Add to these a kid's-
skin filled with flour, a little horn of Cayenne
pepper and salt mixed, and a small piece of
thin leather for a bed, and you have all
necessary for a fortnight's outlying in
Abyssinnia of a frontier man. A flint and steel,
slow-match, an awl, nippers for extracting
thorns, a rifle and ammunition! If a man
cannot be happy in a dry climate, what
would he wish for? Even if you have no
sport with game, there are always small
birds, snakes, fish, lizards, &c., to be had; so
that you need never want."

As to feet-coverings, he observes:
"In a country abounding in rocks (like Abyssinia)
it would be dangerous to attempt to pass
many places excepting barefoot. I went four
years barefoot, and know that it is by far
more comfortable to go without shoes, after
a very short practice. But abstinence in
these climates is always a good thing, and
often necessary. During my long period of
semi-starvation, I never felt lighter in my
life. Wounds of all kinds healed like magic.
Once, in running down a slimy and almost
precipitous path, I struck my bare foot
against the edge of a rock as sharp as a
razor, and a bit of flesh, with the whole of
the nail of my little toe except the root, was
cut off. I could not stop longer than to
polish off the bit that was hanging by the
skin, for we were in chase of a party of Barea
who had cut the throats of three of our
friends the night before, but was obliged to go
on running for about twenty miles that afternoon,
the greater part of the way up to our
ankles in burning sand. I scarcely suffered
from it at all; the next day I forgot it; the
day after, the nail grew again. Another
day, in running after an antelope, I had
wounded, in my eagerness, I jumped over a
bush onto a jagged stump of a fallen tree,
and one splinter, of about the thickness of a
tenpenny-nail, entered the ball of my foot,
passed so far through, that the point appeared
like a black spot under the skin half-an-inch
above the junction of the third and fourth
toes, towards the instep, and then broke
short off. I got my game, cut it up, carried
it home, some two miles, and then drew the
splinter with a nail-wrench. My foot bled a
good deal; but with the exception of a little
stiffness for a day or two, which in nowise
prevented my walking, I suffered no pain at
all. Under European diet in Europe, I
should have been laid up with a bad foot for
at least a fortnight."

Parkyns seems to have always taken the
matter of dress very easy. When he decided
on returning to civilised life, he says: "My
first efforts towards establishing a wardrobe
consisted in the purchase of a few yards of
coarse calico, which I obtained of an Egyptian
pedlar, who was good enough to show us
how he cut them into shirts, and we had two
days' employment in stitching them. Most
of our party were very good with an awl, but
cobbling did not much assist us in hemming
shirts. Our friend the hawker, in gratitude
for my doctoring him, gave me a white skullcap,
and I set about having my head shaved,
with our knives, without soap. After an
hour and a-half's exquisite torture, the scene
closed with one-third unshorn, the rest in
patches, bleeding from nineteen severe
wounds. Not being presentable in this state,
I made myself a turban of a pair of drawers!
But the next morning the owner of the
neighbouring coffee-house brought me a friend
who owned an old, country-made, iron razor,
and soon finished me off. Two Albanian
irregulars, learning my want of clothes, told