"0.2) Overlain" lanuarp lOtb, 1852.
THE Caffre war, which Sir Harry Smith was to finish off by his mere appearance, continues, at a cost, says Sir Charles Shaw, of 0,800 a diy. . . A battalion of the Rifle Brigade has been sent over to strike terror into the black breast, by shooting a few of our harassing foes ; and perhaps we may at last get the better of them. Meanwhile, we have ascertained a momentous fact : it may almost be said that, taken in the lump, with his bad equip- ments and stinted in his practice, the British soldier is not equal to a Caffre !
When we come to the reasons for the unpleasant disparity between the Englishman and the Caffre, the case looks even more ugly. "An Old Officer of Light Division," writing to the Times, ascribes it to the bad construction of the musket ; which is with, out even the improvement of the " doable-pipe swivel " lock, that is now generally used by sportsmen in this country, and is as much behind the improved muskets and rifles of France and Prussia as the old flint lock or even matchlock is behind a modern weapon. The musket is a heavy piece of -artillery, with ball that does not fit it, and does not strike a broad target once in ten ; the ammunition is heavy, adding to the burdens of the soldier, which amount, with knapsack and clothing, to sixty pounds weight. It. was long before official men would trust the percussion-lock as a substitute for the flint ; they will perhaps introduce the double-pipe swivel, now that the Mink rifle is generally adopted elsewhere ; and by the time that some still further improvement in that arm has been effected abroad, the English will have grown used to experiments with the Minie.
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