CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE G OING back a little in time, some account must be given of a day never to be forgotten by those who took part in it-that of the Royal Review of the Scottish Volunteers in 1881, twenty-one years after the first great gathering in Scotland before the Queen. The contrast was extraordinary. The Volunteers were there in greater numbers than in 1860, there being no fewer than 40,624 of all ranks present. But oh! how different was the scene. The Queen, with that kindly consideration which she always showed, chose an afternoon hour for the Review. She had been informed that the arrival of the troops was so arranged that the parade could be held before luncheon, but she preferred to hold it later, saying that she had been distressed to know that a few weeks before, at the English Review in Windsor Park, several men had been smitten by sunstroke, the day being so hot! Most unfortunately her very kindness led to her Volunteers being exposed to a very different evil from that which she dreaded. Up to two o'clock the weather, though gloomy, was not wet, and had the Review been held before noon, it would have been finished before the storm burst. As it was, it broke out with fury about half an hour before the time appointed. No ordinary words can describe that downpour. It was one of those occasions when the fall is not in drops, but in streams. I have often described it by saying that the water came down like "pipe stems." There had been nothing seen in the Queen's Park to compare with it within the memory of man, and the parade ground became a sea of mud before the march past began. About thirty paces from Her Majesty's carriage the troops marched through a running stream high up over the ankles, which had the curling wavelets on the surface that one sees in a swift-flowing millrace. So frightful was the soaking power, that long before a third of the battalions had passed the royal standard, the vast crowd on the hill surged down for home, and it was with great difficulty that they were held back by cavalry, while the Volunteers dribbled through the space between the Palace garden wall and the crowd from the hill, making their way in twos and threes through the lane kept by the troopers, and doubling up into position as they reached the open part of the Park. One good came out of this evil. It was a very crucial test of discipline, and that so many thousand men, soaked to the skin, were successfully kept in hand, recovered from the breaking up of their ranks, and marched past successfully, and were afterwards carried to their homes, many of them having to travel hundreds of miles in their drenched clothing, without there being any serious failure in good conduct, led many military men to form a much higher opinion of the capacity for discipline of the Volunteer than they had ever entertained before. There were, it was |