Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 12, 2025
But let's hear what you have been up to all day." "Well, first, I began by turning out at 5:30 a.m.," said Miles, rolling with a sigh on his other side, for a uniform, cross-belts, boots, ammunition, etcetera, don't, after all, form an easy night-dress. "After a cup of coffee I fell in with a lot of our fellows, and was told off for fatigue-duty. Worked away till 7:30. Then breakfast.
The Indians who had not followed the boat, seeing the ship approach, used many threatening gestures; and brandished their weapons; particularly two, who made a very singular appearance, for their faces seemed to have been dusted with a white powder, and their bodies painted with broad streaks of the same colour, which, passing obliquely over their breasts and backs, looked not unlike the cross-belts worn by our soldiers; the same kind of streaks were also drawn round their legs and thighs like broad garters: Each of these men held in his hand the weapon that had been described to us as like a cymitar, which appeared to be about two feet and a half long, and they seemed to talk to each other with great earnestness.
Tom had recognised him and gave him a patronising nod Tom, a little wretch whom he had cut over the back with a hockey-stick last quarter, and there he was in the centre of the square, rallying round the flag of his county, surrounded by bayonets, cross-belts, and scarlet, the band blowing trumpets and banging cymbals talking familiarly to immense warriors with tufts to their chins and Waterloo medals.
We perceive vast fluctuations in that fog, a dizzy mirage, paraphernalia of war almost unknown to-day, pendant colbacks, floating sabre-taches, cross-belts, cartridge-boxes for grenades, hussar dolmans, red boots with a thousand wrinkles, heavy shakos garlanded with torsades, the almost black infantry of Brunswick mingled with the scarlet infantry of England, the English soldiers with great, white circular pads on the slopes of their shoulders for epaulets, the Hanoverian light-horse with their oblong casques of leather, with brass hands and red horse-tails, the Scotch with their bare knees and plaids, the great white gaiters of our grenadiers; pictures, not strategic lines what Salvator Rosa requires, not what is suited to the needs of Gribeauval.
The rising sun, the green foliage, the white cross-belts, the shining buckles, the scarlet coats of the soldiers, and the farmers standing in line, firmly grasping their muskets, make up the picture of the morning. Major Pitcairn, sitting in his saddle, beholds the line of minute-men, rebels in arms against the sovereign, formed in line to dispute his way.
They wore long gaiters and leather breeches, three-cornered hats, bound with silver lace, long blue coats, with scarlet facings and linings, which latter were shewn by a fastening which held together the two opposite corners of the skirt behind; and in front the breasts were in like manner connected at a single point, where and below which they sloped back, disclosing a long-flapped waistcoat of snowy whiteness; they had very large, long cross-belts, and wore enormous pouches of white leather hung extraordinarily low, and on each of which a little silver star was glittering.
Following the harem attendants marched a company of the royal body-guard, in scarlet cutaway coats like those worn by the British grenadiers during the American Revolution, pipe-clayed cross-belts, white nankeen breeches, enormous cavalry boots, extending half-way up the thigh, and curious hats of black glazed leather, of a shape which was a cross between a fireman's helmet and the cap of a Norman man-at-arms.
They were now directed to make a profound reverence as they passed, and proceeded along the side of the building to the further end. A line of native troops was drawn up across the court, but these wore no uniform, only the lamba wound round their waists, and white cross-belts on their naked bodies. They were armed with the old flint-lock muskets and bayonets of the period.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking