strongly during this trying time; and the services of the young Deputy-Assistant Quartermaster-General were invaluable in planning, superintending, and carrying out the arrangements necessary for the moves, camps, &c. Indeed, had a less efficient officer been on the staff, the regiment would have fared badly; but, thanks to his strength of character and energy, things were managed, not in the spirit of red-tape, but practically and thoroughly. It has been remarked by those who have experienced both situations, that a cholera camp is more trying to the nerves than a battle-field.
Having returned to England on leave in 1873, Captain Stewart exchanged into the 3d Dragoon Guards. Although offered permanent employment on the staff of the Quartermaster-General's department in India, he considered that his future interests lay in another direction. In 1877 Stewart entered the Staff College, creating rather a sensation by bringing with him a four-in-hand team. While there, he was one of the foremost with the College drag-hounds, and was well known with Mr Garth's and the Queen's. After completing the two years' course, being then only a captain of cavalry, and having seen no active service, he volunteered for South Africa.
Stewart afterwards declared that the Zulu campaign was the hardest piece of work he ever did. He was on the eve of embarking for England, almost unnoticed, when Lord Wolseley telegraphed to stop him, and gave him the appointment of military secretary, in the place of Colonel Colley, who had been ordered to India. Stewart thus got his foot on the lowest rung of the ladder, up which he was so rapidly to ascend to fame. In the Secocoeni campaign which followed, he discharged the very severe and heavy duties required of him with his accustomed energy, thereby receiving the well-merited approval of his chief, and afterwards his brevet of Lieutenant-Colonel – which recognition of services no man better deserved.
We next see Stewart on Majuba-Hill with Sir G. Colley, in the spring of 1881. He was close to his chief when that gallant but unfortunate officer was shot dead, and evidently one of the last on that fatal hill, for he was taken prisoner. He afterwards spent an interesting time with the Boers, who treated him well, giving him the very best they had. Like all who shared in that disastrous fight, Stewart was unrecompensed for his hard service there.
After the Transvaal campaign he rejoined his regiment, and did duty with it in command of the detachment at Glasgow until early in 1882, when he was offered an aide-de-campship by Lord Spencer in Ireland. Here the Lord Lieutenant found scope for Colonel Stewart's great abilities in many other than the ordinary duties of an A.D.C., – although for these no man could have been more fitted. His handsome expressive face and peculiar charm of manner, his active habits and bold riding, ensured his popularity with the Irish in the hunting-field as in the ball-room, and he was always a favourite in society; but his capacity for higher and more intellectual work was not ignored, at a time when long heads were much required in Ireland. On account of his sound common-sense and rare tact, Stewart was specially fitted for diplomatic work of an important or delicate nature. He writes about this time from the
