Before leaving their ships, the troops had the temporary character of the expedition brought strongly before their imagination. The bât-horses, collected with difficulty at Scutari, were left behind in Bulgaria; there was no transport for regimental baggage, except an animal to carry the medicine-panniers. Officers loaded their haversacks and their persons with three days' salt pork, biscuit, and such indispensable articles, that a short campaign required. Dressed in tight-fitting swallow-tailed coatees, resplendent with gold lace, now sadly tarnished, their clothing was scarcely adapted to the harsh trials of actual warfare; added to which, they were weighted and encumbered, and had the appearance of “animated lumps of undigested packages, all cloak, bundle, and hairy cap.” Nor did the men fare any better. It appears that the only heavy part of the knapsack was its wooden frame, and this had been discarded some weeks before; when this was done, it served as a light and fairly good valise in which to carry the necessary kit safely and secure from rain. At the last moment, however, it was feared that the men were still too weak to carry even their lightened packs. But, instead of reducing the articles to be taken therein to a _minimum_, this _minimum_, in the shape of a pair of boots, a pair of socks, a shirt, and a forage cap, was ordered to be wrapped in the blanket and great coat; while the knapsack itself, designed to hold them, was left behind on board ship, together with all other articles of private property brought from Varna. Thus an unsightly and most inconvenient bundle was formed, ill-adapted to its purpose, and a doubtful place for the safe keeping of the few articles that were considered indispensable to the soldier’s welfare.[223] Three days' rations, some cooking utensils, wooden water-kegs, and sixty rounds of ammunition completed the personal equipment brought into the enemy’s country. ----- Footnote 223: It appears that the two companies of the Coldstream which were on board H.M.S. _Bellerophon_, under the command of Colonel Lord F. Paulet, retained their lightened knapsacks (Wyatt, p. 19). The reader will be interested to learn that the men left Varna dressed in white trousers; the order to take cloth trousers into wear, is dated Sept. 15th. ----- N^o. 3. [Illustration: COUNTRY BETWEEN EUPATORIA AND SEVASTOPOL _Compiled from_ Hamley’s Crimea _by kind permission_. ]