The great difficulty was to instruct them in distances. I frequently took them away from camp and made them guess the distance in paces from some particular object, such as a tree, or white-ant hill. Very few of the men had the slightest idea of this important subject; but at the commencement, even the officers were perfectly ignorant. At length, by constant practice at the target, varying the range from 100 to 300 yards, about a third of the corps became fair shots, and these few were tolerably good judges of distance up to 400 yards. The colonel, Abd-el- Kader, became an excellent shot, as he was an officer who took great interest in his profession. The remainder of the corps shot as well as they could, and took great pains; but although they were considered crack marksmen by the line-regiments, their reputation would have suffered if their deficiencies had been exposed. At any rate, they were very dangerous with such a weapon as the snider, when firing into masses of the enemy. I distinguished "The Forty" from the line regiment by a scarlet uniform; this was a simple red flannel shirt, worn outside their Zouave trouser, and secured by a belt, with ammunition-pouches, round the waist. This uniform, with linen gaiters, and with a head-dress of the scarlet fez, bound by a turban of cobalt blue, looked remarkably well. In active service, the officers carried sniders; thus, the corps complete consisted of forty-eight sniders; but together with Lieutenant Baker and myself, it comprised fifty rifles. The high state of discipline and the fine morale of this little force was a good example of what may be effected, even with a material of so low a reputation as the negro. My men were natives of various tribes scattered over an immense extent of Central Africa. Each had a certain love of the country from which he had been originally stolen by the slave-traders when a boy, before he found his way into government service. I always endeavoured to keep up this feeling, and to create emulation among the men of different tribes; thus, a native of Pongo would assume a superiority over a Dinka, although the Dinka considered himself of a higher class than a Pongo. A Noba regarded himself as superior to all others. But by degrees I established a principle that was generally accepted by them all--that an old soldier with a good reputation should take precedence of all others, without reference to caste or tribe. Thus, the aim of all young privates would be to become old soldiers, and to rise in rank according to their merits. There were several excellent examples of good soldiers in "The Forty," among whom stood first Mohammed-el-Feel, sergeant of the body-guard. The latter comprised ten men, selected from "The Forty" as creme de la creme; these men were exempted from all labour, and they formed the guard of two sentries by night, and one by day.