HOT AVEATHER VOYAGES. 261 



mostly affected, as they are more in the sun than the 

 others but it is not so it is the engineers, firemen, 

 stewards, and cooks, whose duties keep them out of 

 the sun, who suffer most. 



Exposure to the direct influence of the sun's rays, 

 when proper precautions are taken, seems therefore to 

 become dangerous only when it is very long con- 

 tinued and above all, when from fatigue, or other 

 causes, the system is suffering from exhaustion; it is 

 to the latter fact especially that the deaths of soldiers 

 on the march by sun-stroke are to be attributed and 

 we may add to the use of ardent spirits, as the use 

 of stimulants, before or during exposure, has been 

 found to have a direct tendency to increase both the 

 number and the fatal character of these attacks. 



Active exercise in the sun, even during the hottest 

 weather, of itself however, as we have said, rarely proves 

 injurious, where these and other preventable and unfa- 

 vourable conditions are eliminated. Thus tiger shooting 

 in India is most successful during the height of the 

 hot season, when a leather guard is sometimes necessary 

 to shield the hand from the heat which the sun has 

 imparted to the gun barrels; yet the unanimous tes- 

 timony of all sportsmen out after tigers goes to show 

 that they rarely or never get sun-stroke. So also during 

 the Indian Mutiny in 1857 the European troops had to 

 make long marches throughout the hottest season of 

 the year. The great outbreak had in fact been timed 

 to coincide with the hot season, in the hope that the 

 great heat would unfavourably affect Europeans in their 

 operations in the field: * but this expectation proved 



* This outbreak of the Great Mutiny began at Meerut near Delhi on May 

 10, 1857, i.e. at the height of the hot season. It was, however, in no 



