Here I was out of sight, although not far from the policeman guarding
the ladder; and, taking care to keep the corner of the building
between us, I made my way round to the back of the lodge, and then
slipped out of the gate without being seen.
SPYING ON MOUNTAIN TROOPS.
I was once in a country where the mountain troops on their frontier
were said to be of a wonderfully efficient kind, but nobody knew much
about their organisation or equipment or their methods of working, so
I was sent to see if I could find out anything about them, I got in
amongst the mountains at the time when their annual manoeuvres were
going on, and I found numbers of troops quartered in the valleys
and billeted in all the villages. But these all appeared to be the
ordinary type of troops, infantry, artillery of the line, etc. The
artillery were provided with sledges by which the men could pull the
guns up the mountain sides with ropes, and the infantry were supplied
with alpenstocks to help them in getting over the bad ground. For
some days I watched the manoeuvres, but saw nothing very striking to
report.
Then one evening in passing through a village where they were billeted
I saw a new kind of soldier coming along with three pack mules. He
evidently belonged to those mountain forces of which, so far, I had
seen nothing. I got into conversation with him, and found that he
had come down from the higher ranges in order to get supplies for his
company which was high up among the snow peaks, and entirely out of
reach of the troops manoeuvring on the lower slopes.
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