in front, and the 33d regiment were put through the bayonet exercise, which they performed exceedingly well, especially when it is considered that it is nearly four months since they last did it. They then went through the platoon drill; but the natives did not at all comprehend this. They heard the snapping of the locks as the Sniders were supposed to be fired in rapid volleys. When informed what was being done, they entirely disbelieved it, and plainly said so, stating that no guns could be fired so quickly as that. It is a very great pity that a small number of cartridges were not broken up and served out as blank cartridges; or better still, had a hundred ball cartridges been served out to ten men, to have been discharged as rapidly as possible against a rock on the hill-side. Weight is of course precious, but the lesson those hundred cartridges would have taught would have been cheaply purchased at any cost. It was emphatically a penny-wise-and-pound-foolish economy. Colonel Penn’s batteries of steel guns were then examined, and these fired a few rounds with blank cartridges. Our savage visitors, however, were more impressed with the artillery than they had been with the infantry. The guns, they said, were small, and did not make much noise; the infantry were pretty to look at, but of no use in a hilly country, and their long lines would be very easy to shoot at. These criticisms are very amusing on the part of the ragged savages, of whom I heard an Irish soldier of the 33d say, “And bedad it’s ashamed I’d be to have to fire me rifle at such a miserable set of divils intirely. It ’ud be like killing a definceless brute baste.” The general feeling in the camp, indeed, upon the subject was that of disappointment. It was exactly the reverse of “the stern joy that warriors feel in foe-men worthy of their steel.” We did hope that if we were to fight it would be against something in some way or another formidable. We had heard a good deal about Theodore’s army, who were said to be armed with guns and were drilled, and we did have a faint hope that our foe would not be utterly contemptible. But the first appearance of Abyssinian soldiery has quite dispelled any such idea. Mr. Speedy and our interpreters assure us that they are a fair sample of Abyssinian troops. Why, Falstaff’s ragged regiment was a disciplined and regular body to this band of savages. As for their guns, I should say by their appearance that at least two-thirds would burst at the very first volley fired, and would be infinitely more dangerous to themselves than to anyone else.