Note 77 — Chapter XV

I have heard much of the English West India regiments and of the negro corps of the Northern Union. But the testimony of white men under fire with them, and—one of the best criterions of the soldier’s efficiency—the list of officers killed and wounded in the few skirmishes which have taken place during my service on the West African Coast (1860-64), convince me that they are worth even less than Sepoys. All men “well trained, well treated, well led, and well supported,” will of course fight; but the Jamaicans and the West Africans will behave perhaps the worst. I by no means include the Hausas, the Mandengas, and other Moslem races, a material from which tolerable and even good soldiers, as blacks, can be made.