PUNJAB FRONTIER FORCE.

177

forms of fever and dysentery that prevailed. Fifty-nine men had to be left behind in hospital
when we marched out. The regiment, now forming part of the 2nd Division Field Force, left
Quetta on the 21st November, and passing over the Murghi Kotal, and through Kuljak and
Urinzai, and over a succession of low sandhills, reached the Pishin Valley. Here the 2nd
Division halted until the middle of December, when we crossed the Kojuk Pass over the Kwaja
Amran mountains, and encamped at Chaman. The next march was to Spin Baldak, seven stages
from Quetta., where we were halted on the 31st December.

XV. Sickness, mortality and invaliding.— Strength of the regiment—

Sickness,
mortality and
invaliding.

XVI. Principal causes of sickness. —The following table shows the admission for the prin-
cipal causes of sickness during the year, and contrasts them with those of last year:—

Principal
causes of
sickness.

The year was an unhealthy one eveywhere, but the excessive sickness of the regiment is attri-
butable to the residence of at first one-third, and for a month of the whole, of the regiment
at Quetta. Here disease was universal, and scarcely a single resident escaped the virulent
forms of fever and dysentery that prevailed. Officers and men suffered alike. At one time
we had 200 men and followers in hospital. The numbers above, however, cannot give an idea
of the sickness, and much of the sickness, mortality and invaliding of 1879 will have to be
accounted for by the diseases contracted at Quetta. Dysentery was of the most acute and
uncontrollable character. The fever was severe and prolonged in its attacks, and most obsti-
nate to treatment, and was generally complicated with dysentery, diarrhœa, or jaundice. The
sufferers became thin, nerveless, and anaemic, and the victims of the most distressing dyspep-
sia. I have never seen men so utterly pulled down by this disease, and so stamped with every
feature of the malarial cachexia. There is no obvious cause for the unhealthiness of this
station. In the worst months, October and November, the weather was mild or bracing, and
it was almost incredible that the air of so genial a climate could be so deadly. No doubt
something was attributable to bad water (though there was plenty of good) and to the pre-
vailing cold north-west wind, and much perhaps to the extensive breaking up of the ground
to get clay for the building of the fort and of the garrison lines. Whatever the cause, it is prob-
able that a great improvement would be effected by the planting of gardens and trees, which
would take up and absorb the gases that now poison the atmosphere.

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