pier-accommodation must be greatly increased, and must be made practical in all weather, that is to say, practical all day in ordinary weather. To do this the pier should be run out another fifty yards, and should then have a cross-pier erected at its extremity. The native boats could lie under the lee of this and unload in all weathers, and there would be sufficient depth of water for the smaller transports to lie alongside on the outside in calm weather, and to unload direct on to the pier. I know that this would be an expensive business, that stone has to be brought from a distance, &c. But it is a necessity, and therefore expense is no object. I consider that the railway which is to be laid between the landing-place and this point will be of immense utility to the expedition; but I believe it to be a work of quite inferior importance in comparison with this question of increased pier-accommodation. There is no doubt that in spite of the troops and animals arriving from Bombay before things were ready for them here, things would have gone on far better than they have done, had there been any head to direct operations here. But the officers of the various departments have been working night and day without any head whatever to give unity and object to their efforts. I understand that General Staveley was astonished to find that before the arrival of General Collings, two days previous to himself, there had been no head to the expedition. Sir Robert Napier was fully alive to the extreme importance of this question of wharfage, for in his memorandum of September 12th he recommended that planking, tressles, piles, and materials to construct wharves should be forwarded with the 1st Brigade. “There cannot,” he proceeded, “be too many landing-places to facilitate debarkation, and on such convenience will depend the boats being quickly cleared, and the stores removed from them dry. It would be advisable that a considerable number of empty casks should be forwarded to be used as rafts, or to form floating-wharves for use at low water, particularly should the shores shelve gently. Spars to form floating shears should also be forwarded.” Thus Sir Robert Napier, himself an engineer, had long before foreseen the extreme importance of providing the greatest possible amount of landing accommodation; and yet three months after this memorandum was written, and two months after the arrival of the pioneer force at Zulla, an unfinished pier was all that had been effected, and Colonel Wilkins, the officer to whom this most important work had been specially intrusted, was quietly staying up at Senafe with Colonels Merewether, Phayre, and Field. A second pier was not completed until the end of February, and consequently many vessels remained for months in harbour before their cargoes could be unloaded, at an expense and loss to the public service which can hardly be over-estimated.