kept up, roads must be made to some extent, for there are many places perfectly impracticable for loaded animals. And so the three thousand men would be frittered all over the country, and would be harassed to death by overwork and watching, and it is certain they could never penetrate to Magdala. Has a “Taxpayer” ever read the history of the French campaign in Spain? Has he any idea of the number of hundred thousand men who marched into that country, and of the numbers who returned to France? A very small proportion of the deficit fell under British steel and lead. They were accounted for by the peasantry. They died, shot down upon baggage-guard, cut off when in search of provisions, surprised when in small parties, harassed to death by overwork. Such would have been the fate of three thousand men landing in Abyssinia. The people here are as brave as the Spaniards, the country is beyond all comparison more difficult, and the resources which, it offers to an invader are as nothing to those of Spain. Our force, as it is now constituted, is sufficient to overawe the country, and it is fortunate that it is so. For I say fearlessly, and there is not an officer here who would not support me in that opinion, that if the people were hostile, we could not even with our present force have ever hoped to reach Magdala. It would have been a sheer impossibility. A mere passive resistance, the driving away of flocks and herds, and the burning of the grass, would have brought us to a standstill at Senafe; while the bare idea of defending our communication, and guarding the enormous trains required for our march of three hundred miles through a barren, hostile, and most difficult country, is so supremely ridiculous as to be laughable. The experiment of the three thousand men, had it been tried, would have ended in a disaster such as, with the exception of Cabul, the British arms have never experienced, and it must afterwards have been retrieved with a force of three times the strength even of our present one, and at an expenditure which might have taught even the “British Taxpayer” that penny wisdom is an equivalent for pound foolishness. A general order has just appeared regulating the whole distribution of the troops; and as this is a final arrangement, it will no doubt be interesting to all who have friends in the army here. First Division.—Major-general Staveley, K.C.B., in command; Colonel Wood, deputy-adjutant-general; Major Baigrie, deputy-quartermaster-general. Pioneer Force: Brigadier-general Field. Troops: forty sabres 3d Native Cavalry; forty Scinde Horse; 3d and 4th company Bombay Sappers and Miners; two companies 33d Regiment; two companies Beloochees; one company Punjaub Pioneers.