That daring adventure, together with a very notable rout of rebel cavalry at Sindwaho a little earlier, was sufficient recommendation for the V.C., and the honour, though slow in coming, was eventually bestowed upon him. It is curious to note how persistently the authorities refused to recognise Evelyn Wood’s valour. In the Crimea, where as a middy he served with the Naval Brigade, he was singled out for distinction for his bravery at the Redan assault; but his claim was ignored, despite the strong protests of his commander, Captain Lushington. His subsequent career, after he had abandoned the Navy for the Army, should be well known to every British boy. There has not been a war since the Mutiny in which he has not played a leading part,--witness the Ashanti, Zulu, Transvaal, and Egyptian campaigns,--and to-day there is no finer soldier in the service than the ex-Sirdar of the Egyptian army, Field-Marshal Sir Henry Evelyn Wood, G.C.B. CHAPTER XV. IN THE SIXTIES.--CHINA, JAPAN, INDIA, WEST AFRICA, AND CANADA. The principal war in which we were engaged in the sixties was that waged against the Maoris in New Zealand, but that demands a chapter to itself. For the present I will confine myself to some of the smaller campaigns of the same period which yielded several notable V.C.’s. Towards the end of 1859 trouble broke out afresh with China, immediately after the conclusion of what is known as the Second Chinese War. Sir F. Bruce, the British Commissioner, while sailing up the Pei-ho to Pekin to ratify the treaty just made with the Emperor, was fired upon by the Taku Forts at the mouth of the river. No apologies being forthcoming, an expedition under General Sir James Hope Grant was despatched to teach the Chinese a salutary lesson. The expedition, which was strengthened by a French force, was ready to begin operations against the Taku Forts by July 1860, but owing to the swampy nature of the country around them a halt had to be called while the engineers set to work to make roads. These were completed by the middle of August, and then the attack commenced in real earnest. Under a heavy fire from the Chinese gunners English and French vied with each other to be the first to cross the ditches in front of the forts. Scaling-ladders and pontoon bridges were requisitioned, but the delay in placing these in position galled a number of our men to such an extent that privates and officers alike plunged boldly into the water and swam across. The first to reach the walls were Lieutenant Robert Rogers, of the 44th Regiment, two Lieutenants of the 67th, E. H. Lenon and Nathaniel Burslem, with Privates John M’Dougall and Thomas Lane. Up through the embrasures they all clambered, Burslem and Lane being specially noticed as they knocked away a portion of the wall and enlarged the opening sufficiently to enable them to scramble through, just as did Dunley at the Secunderabagh fight.