Page:Volunteering in India.djvu/17

Rh But as the morning had not yet sufficiently brightened for the “review,” I took advantage of the idle moments at my disposal to note on the margin of my shirt-cuff the uniform, or rather “turn-out,” of the Volunteers.

They wore brown corduroy breeches, over which were drawn jack-boots reaching above the knees; loose blue flannel blouses (called “jumpers” by the diggers in Australia); and grey felt helmets enveloped in huge white turbans completed a rough-and-ready uniform, in which they certainly looked a dashing and dare-devil set of fellows. A heavy sabre, light carbine, and formidable revolvers were their arms.

The horses, though untrained, were young, powerful, and splendid animals. for the hard and unceasing work they were destined to encounter. And their trappings were for service, and not for show.

The Governor-General (Lord Canning), having inspected and complimented the Volunteers, bade them a kind farewell — a sincere au revoir. And presently the Corps, numbering two hundred and fifty-eight sabres, under the leadership of Colonel Richardson, C.B., left Calcutta for Upper India.

Two hundred and fifty-eight Volunteers seem a paltry number to have rallied round the Government in so momentous a crisis as that which called them to arms on its behalf; but it must be borne in mind that in those awful days there were but a mere handful of available Englishmen in Bengal, and so far as their numbers were concerned, it was an acknowledged surprise that so many were found to leap forward in 