Their shaving, their ablutions, their cleaning their shoes and clothes, all come under the same strict supervision, so that at last they get into the notion that their comfort, cleanliness, feeding and clothing, all are the duty and business of their officers, they having no interest in the matter, and that what they are not ordered to do for their own relief they may leave undone. In the sister service this is not so. A sailor will mend his clothes, will leave his hammock properly fitted, his bedding properly made, and his comforts so far as depends upon himself, properly cared for, whether his officers order it or not. The result of all this excessive care and attention is that you make men mere children. When the soldier leaves his clean comfortable barracks in England and is put into the field, where he has few or none of the accommodations he had at home, he is utterly helpless, and his officer on whom he leant, is just as helpless when a new state of things arises, as he can possibly be. All this was most fully illustrated before Fort Erie. The line might nearly as well have slept in the open air. The incorporated Militia, on the contrary, erected shanties, far superior, in warmth, tightness and comfort, to any canvas tent. De Watteville's regiment, which was recruited, chiefly from the prison hulks, consisted of all the nations of Europe, but all of them had served in the armies of Napoleon, and all of them had there learned how to make the best of a bad bargain. These, though they had not the skill in the axe inherent in their brethren of the Militia, took down hemlock boughs (a species of the pine, "_pinus canadensis_,") and cutting off the tails of them, made thatched wigwams, perfectly weatherproof; and though they could not equal the Canadian Militia in _woodcraft_, they greatly excelled them in gastronomic lore; and thus, while our fellows had no better shift than to frizzle their rations of salt provisions on the ends of their ramrods, these being practical botanists, sent out one soldier from each mess, who gathered a haversack full of wild pot herbs, with which and a little flour their ration was converted into a capital kettle of soup.