During the Tonkin War, the supreme command of the naval and military forces had been vested in Admiral Corbet, and the military officers strongly objected to being commanded by a sailor. In order, therefore, to avoid a repetition of what had then taken place, the whole of the flotilla which was sent to Madagascar was placed under the command of a mere Captain, who had to take orders from the General commanding the troops. The Navy, of course, resented what they considered a slight, and carefully avoided helping the Army in any way. Of course they did not openly display their rivalry, but they took good care to give no help whatever to the Military Chiefs, allowing them to commit the greatest blunders without warning them beforehand. For instance, the War Office having decided to use the River Betsiboka as far as it was navigable, a large number of steel barges were sent over to Menjunka, which was supposed to be at the mouth of the river. Unfortunately, the real mouth of the river stood nearly thirty miles farther inland, so that, unless the weather was perfectly calm, the barges were swamped before they had reached the river itself; the water on the other hand being too shallow to enable steamers, except those of the smallest draft, to reach the mouth. When I arrived in Madagascar, in a small 180-ton steamer I had chartered in Zanzibar, I was ordered to follow the course of the river as far as I could go, and to make a survey on my way, as none existed. After considerable trouble I managed to get about seventy miles inland, and on my return to Menjunka, as I was making my report to the General, the naval officer in command walked into the room just as I was asking the General whether he could allow me twenty-four hours to put my survey on paper. The naval officer inquired what survey I was speaking of, and on being told that it was a survey of the river, he replied that I had been wasting my time, as his officers "had surveyed it long ago, long ago"; and he added that he would send it to the General when he returned to his ship. He knew perfectly well, before I left, that I had been instructed to make a survey, but he had never offered to hand over to the General the map he had in his possession. Again, the Naval Commander was fully aware that a large number of transports were coming, but he carefully abstained from advising the War Office that there was only one steam launch at Menjunka to land the cargo, and the consequence was that at one time there lay as many as twenty-four steamers in the harbour, with no means of unloading them; an average of £200 per day having to be paid for demurrage on each. I could quote scores of similar instances, but it is not my object to write the history of the Madagascar campaign.