plorable state of weakness and debility, accompanied by cramps and pains in the limbs: men discharged from the hospitals were long in regaining their strength; and their too frequent indulgence in pine-apples, limes, and other fruit with which the woods about Rangoon abound, brought on dysentery, which, in their exhausted state, generally terminated in death.”
The situation of the combined force at this time “was, indeed, truly melancholy; even those who still continued to do their duty, emaciated and reduced, could with difficulty crawl about. The hospitals crowded, and with all the care and attention of a numerous and experienced medical staff, the sick for many months continued to increase, until scarcely 3000 duty-soldiers were left to guard the lines. Floating hospitals were established at the mouth of the river; bread was furnished in sufficient quantities, but nothing except change of season, or of climate, seemed likely to restore the sufferers to health.
“Mergui and Tavoy, now in our possession, and represented by the professional men who visited them as possessing every requisite advantage, were accordingly fixed on as convalescent stations. To these places numbers were subsequently sent, and the result fully justified the most sanguine expectations that were formed. Men who had for months remained in a most debilitated state at Rangoon, rapidly recovered on arriving at Mergui, and were soon restored in full health and vigour to their duty[1].”
On the 5th October, a detachment of Madras native infantry and some pioneers, with a few camel howitzers, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Francis Smith, C.B., was sent to attack the enemy’s stockaded position in the neighbourhood of Annauben and the pagoda of Keykloo, fourteen miles from Rangoon; and at the same time another military detachment, under Major Thomas Evans, was embarked in the flotilla, and directed to make a simultaneous movement upon Than-ta-bain, about 30 miles distant from
- ↑ Snodgrass, 79.
