CAMPAIGNING ON THE UPPER NIGER.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—My attention has been directed by several people to a sentence in your review of April 9th on Lieutenant Vandeleur's book, "Campaigning on the Upper Nile and Niger." The reviewer, referring to the Hausa troops engaged in the Niger- Soudan campaign, speaks of them as "hitherto untried, ad- vancing against cavalry twenty times their number." I quote from memory. [The correct words are: "infantry who had seen no fighting advancing against cavalry who outnumbered them more than tenfold."] The impression given is that the force, the Royal Niger Constabulary, had seen no previous service. This is inaccurate in the case of a force which, raised in 1886, had under my predecessors, Majors Vetch and Ewart, Captains Saulez, Moloney, and Morgan, carried out many successful "little wars," of which the following—Beaufort Island, Zhibu, Oguta, Amagedi, N'koza, Delta '95, Kpata, and of later years, Keteshi and Katshella—might well be accounted regimental honours. It was the confidence engendered by the excellent military qualities displayed by the Hausa and the Yoruba in their previous service which enabled the Royal Niger Company to embark upon a campaign against such enormous odds as opposed them in the campaign so excel- lently described by Lieutenant Vandeleur in his book. The one experience the troops lacked was that of hostilities against large bodies of cavalry, and very possibly your reviewer in- tended to say "hitherto untried against cavalry," which ren- dering would have conveyed no such wrong impression as is given by the sentence to which I trust you will pardon my Major Commanding Royal Niger Constabulary. Borgasi, necr Kiama, Borgu, June 12th.
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