The question as to the most suitable organization for the Land Transport Corps occupied a good deal of Sir Robert Napier’s attention while the expedition was being fitted out, and caused a considerable amount of correspondence between him and the Bombay Government.  The Commissary-General wished to keep the corps under his own orders, and objected to its being given an entirely military organization.  Sir Robert Napier preferred to establish the corps on an independent basis, but was at first overruled by the Bombay Government.  While acting in accordance with their orders, the Commander-in-Chief wrote:  ’I believe that the success of systems depends more on the men who work them than on the systems themselves; but I cannot accept without protest a decision to throw such a body of men as the drivers of our transport animals will be (if we get them) on an expedition in a foreign country without a very complete organization to secure order and discipline.’  Eventually Sir Robert got his own way, but much valuable time had been lost, and the corps was organized on too small a scale;[2] the officers and non-commissioned officers were not sent to Zula in sufficient time or in sufficient numbers to take charge of the transport animals as they arrived.

A compact, properly-supervised train of 2,600 mules, with serviceable, well-fitting pack-saddles, was sent from the Punjab; and from Bombay came 1,400 mules and ponies and 5,600 bullocks, but these numbers proving altogether inadequate to the needs of the expedition, they were supplemented by animals purchased in Persia, Egypt, and on the shores of the Mediterranean.  The men to look after them were supplied from the same sources, but their number, even if they had been efficient, was insufficient, and they were a most unruly and unmanageable lot.  They demanded double the pay for which they had enlisted, and struck work in a body because their demand was not at once complied with.  They refused to take charge of the five mules each man was hired to look after, and when that number was reduced to three, they insisted that one should be used as a mount for the driver.  But the worst part of the whole organization, or, rather, want of organization, was that there had been no attempt to fit the animals with pack-saddles, some of which were sent from England, some from India, and had to be adjusted to the mules after they had been landed in Abyssinia, where there was not an establishment to make the necessary alterations.  The consequence was that the wretched animals became cruelly galled, and in a few weeks a large percentage were unfit for work, and had to be sent to the sick depot.

Other results of having no properly arranged transport train, and no supervision or discipline, were that mules were lost or stolen, starved for want of food, or famished from want of water.  The condition of the unfortunate animals was such that, though they had been but a few weeks in the country, when they were required to proceed to Senafe, only sixty-seven miles distant, a very small proportion were able to accomplish the march; hundreds died on the way, and their carcases, quickly decomposing in the hot sun, became a fruitful source of dangerous disease to the force.