WALL A JAB AD. 27 



been my fellow-voyager from England. The subject of 

 cholera was brought on the tapis, and after describing the 

 horrible sights he had witnessed, he exclaimed, in a jocular 

 manner, helping himself at the same time to a glass of 

 brandy and water, " This is the way I keep out the 

 cholera." About half-an-hour after his departure, a native 

 servant summoned me to his quarters, where I found his 

 young wife in an agony of despair, by the bedside of her 

 husband, who was writhing beneath an attack of spasmodic 

 cholera. All the usual remedies were applied, which in 

 those days consisted chiefly of brandy and opium, in large 

 quantities, which, if it did not cure the patient, at all events 

 alleviated his sufferings; and under this treatment, appa- 

 rently insensible, and in a very few hours, expired poor 



L r. Many other European victims to this fatal disease 



were added to the list, and few days elapsed without the sad 

 details of a military funeral, and the mournful notes of the 

 " Dead March in Saul/' as the body was carried to its last 

 resting-place. 



I cannot help here remarking, although the system is said 

 to be changed in these days, and that temperance and 

 sobriety have usurped the places of drunkenness and 

 debauchery, that the mode of life adopted by many officers, 

 both young and old, was but too favourable to the propagation 

 of disease of every kind. I shall not instance exposure to 

 the sun as one of the fatal causes, as opinions are divided on 

 this head, some considering that the exercise, amusement, 

 and excitement caused by a moderate indulgence in sport- 

 ing, even under the rays of a tropical sun, may counter- 

 balance, in beneficial results, any evil effect it may produce, but 

 describe the ordinary daily course of life of an Indian officer 

 during the period that I was in the service, and leave the 

 reader to judge for himself. I do not for a moment deny that 

 there were many exceptions, but they only proved the rule. 



