JUNE.
On the 2d, the embarkation commenced, and by the 15th the whole army was embarked, and had sailed for the different presidencies, except the 7th regiment, which, on account of the plague still prevailing in it after the rest of the army had embarked, was ordered to remain two months. Most of the corps in the army embarked in the most healthy state. There was hardly a sick man, except a few cases of the venereal disease which had resisted mercury.
To conclude, never, perhaps, was there an army embarked for any service more healthy than the Indian army was when it re-embarked on its return from Egypt.
Previously to the arrival of the army from Egypt, in order to provide against the introduction of the plague into India, quarantines were established at the presidencies of Bombay, Bengal, and Madras, as well as at the island of Ceylon. The principal of these was at Butcher’s island, near Bombay, where there were pest and quarantine establishments, of which, on my arrival in June, I took the charge. At this period, letters from Dr Short, at Bagdad, and from Mr Milne, at Bassorah, described the plague as raging in Persia, and particularly at Ispahan and Bagdad: in consequence of this information every vessel, both from the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, was ordered to Butcher’s island.
As the ships arrived, the troops from the Red Sea were landed; but the artillery, 86th regiment, 1st Bombay regiment, and the commissariat department, were so uncommonly healthy, that I detained them but a very few days on the island.
The 7th Bombay regiment landed at Butcher’s island in August. As this was the corps in which the plague had principally prevailed, though they were not unhealthy, I judged it prudent to detain them a month. On my last inspection of them before they left the island, of a total of seven hundred, including Sepoys, their wives, and the public and private followers of the corps, I found only four sick, and these I believe were all catarrhs.
Dr Henderson, with the pest-establishment, and all those whom we had left at Suez, arrived at Butcher’s island on the 1st September. The convalescents from the plague, as well as the guard, and the pest-house servants, were, on their arrival, all of them very healthy; but I thought it safe to keep them in quarantine on the island till October, when, like all the others who had been in quarantine, they were provided with new clothing and sent over to Bombay.
The company’s packets from Bassorah, and the vessels which arrived from the Persian Gulf, had none of them the least suspicious appearance, and I found that their crews were all very healthy.
I had likewise the satisfaction to receive accounts from the medical gentlemen employed in the expedition, after their arrival at Calcutta, Madras, and Ceylon: their accounts were so late as November. In none of the corps did any death occur from the time of embarkation at Suez. The deaths which appear in the annexed table, in the 80th regiment, were men lost in the wreck of one of the transports.
END OF PART I.