I arrived in Marseilles about nine o'clock in the evening, and having addressed myself to a non-commissioned officer who was on the platform, I was conducted by him to the depot, known as the "Incurables," and lodged for the night. This was my first experience of a military bed and barracks, and it must be confessed that I was not favourably impressed by their cleanliness, or rather their want of it. Here I met again my friend of the recruiting office, and six other volunteers for the Foreign Regiments, and learnt from him that his name was Balden, and that, like myself, he had been placed in the first of these two corps. He had arrived the day before, and told me that we should leave for Oran on the morrow by the steamer _Abd-el-Kader_. The next morning, 1st March, 1890, we awoke for the first time to the note of the bugle sounding the _réveil_; and after a wash and brush up in the lavatory, came back to the barrack-room, where I had slept, to partake of the usual morning meal of the French soldier--a mug of sweetened black coffee and a slice of bread. The room in which we had passed the night was, together with the furniture it contained, of the regulation type, to be met with in the barracks of most Continental armies. It was about 75 feet long, and 20 broad; there was a door in the middle of each of the longest sides, and three windows at either end. It contained twenty-four cots, six on either side of the doors. These beds consist of two iron trestles, with three pine planks laid over them. A straw mattress, a bolster, a brown blanket, and two coarse sheets complete the outfit. Along both sides of the room is a shelf upon which each French soldier arranges his neatly-folded kit, which must be placed just above the bed he is occupying. From several hooks fixed underneath the shelf, are suspended the water-bottles, belts, cartridge cases, bayonets, and canvas wallets of the men. These must, of course, be arranged in a similar and regulation manner by each one. In the middle of the room, between the two doors, is the gun-rack in which all the rifles of the occupants are placed. Between the rack and the window, at either end of the room, is a plain wooden table with benches; it is at this that the meals are taken. Just over every cot is suspended, from a nail in the edge of the shelf, a card bearing the name, number and grade of the man who occupies it. The room lodges two squads, each of which is under the orders of a corporal; the "non-coms" being responsible for the maintenance of order and cleanliness. Generally the rooms in French barracks present a very clean and smart appearance. Such was not the case with the one we slept in at Marseilles; but this can easily be accounted for by the fact that it was used by a succession of passing recruits, who possessed no kit and no knowledge of their duties, and who occupied it for two or three days at a time, or for a night only.