NOVEMBER.
At the commencement of this month, the army was encamped at El Hammed. The sick were in the thatched buildings, and the mortality bore but a small proportion to the sickness. The 86th regiment were very healthy in Ghiza. The weather during the month was different from what we had experienced for a considerable time. The sky was constantly clouded, and it often blew strongly from the west. It rained on fifteen days, and the quantity of rain which fell during the month was considerable. On the 17th, there was much thunder and lightning. The dews were heavy, and there was generally a thick fog which lasted till eight or nine in the morning. The extreme ranges of the thermometer in my marquee were from 57° to 77°.
In the beginning of the month, the whole sick of the army amounted to one thousand three hundred and fifty, or more than one-fourth part of the whole strength of it. In the course of the month there appeared one hundred and seventy cases of intermittent fever, occasioned evidently by the effluvia from the low ground between the camp and the river, which retained the rain, and, before we moved, became a swamp.
On the 8th, we were again alarmed at the appearance of a case of the plague, in the department of the commissary of cattle, which was immediately put under quarantine. On the 12th, symptoms of the disease appeared in a Sepoy of the Bengal battalion, who was in the hospital of that corps. On the 13th, five more cases were discovered in the same hospital, which was ordered to be burnt, the sick having been removed into a large house near Rosetta, where the same precautions were used as with the 88th regiment, when the disease first broke out. After their removal, no case appeared in that battalion. On the 12th a case of small-pox was discovered in the hospital of the 10th regiment; and, in the course of two days more, four cases appeared in the same hospital. The first, a Portugueze servant, died. At the end of the month, the number of sick was reduced. In the weekly return from the 20th to the 26th, there were six hundred and thirty-two Europeans, and three hundred and eighty Sepoys, making a total of one thousand and twelve.
None of the tents kept the rain well out, which was often heavy. The sand, however, quickly absorbed it in most places. The fever was, in several instances, similar to a type, which we had been little used to, viz. the typhoid.