The coffee sent from Constantinople has been received and issued to the troops green, the Commissariat having no means whatever of roasting it. Very recently, however, an able officer of the Navy, Captain Heath of the _Sanspareil_, undertook to have machines made by the engineers on board his ship for roasting coffee; and in this he has succeeded, but they have not yet produced as much as is required for the daily consumption.
The Commissary-General applied to the Treasury for roasted coffee three months ago. None has as yet arrived. A very large amount of warm clothing has been distributed, and your Majesty's soldiers, habited in the cloaks of various countries, might be taken for the troops of any nation as well as those of England.
Huts have arrived in great abundance, and as much progress is made in getting them up as could be hoped for, considering that there has been a very heavy fall of snow, and that a thaw has followed it, and the extremely limited means of conveyance at command.
Much having been said, as Lord Raglan has been given to understand, in private letters, of the inefficiency of the officers of the Staff, he considers it to be due to your Majesty, and a simple act of justice to those individuals, to assure your Majesty that he has every reason to be satisfied with their exertions, their indefatigable zeal, and undeviating, close attention to their duties, and he may be permitted to add that the horse and mule transport for the carriage of provisions and stores are under the charge of the Commissariat, not of the Staff, and that the Department in question engages the men who are hired to take care of it, and has exclusive authority over them.
Lord Raglan transmitted to the Duke of Newcastle, in the month of December, the report of a Medical Board, which he caused to assemble at Constantinople for the purpose of ascertaining the state of health of the Duke of Cambridge. The report evidently showed the necessity of His Royal Highness's return to England for its re-establishment. This, Lord Raglan knows, was the opinion of the Honourable Lieutenant-Colonel Macdonald,[4] whose attention and devotion to His Royal Highness could not be surpassed, and who was himself very anxious to remain with the Army.