Major Wahab and Brigadier McCreagh returned from Cheduba and Negrais about this time, having accomplished the purpose for which they were detached. The capture of these places had not been completed without some loss and considerable slaughter. Cheduba was expected to have proved of some use, but it was found that, with the exception of a few buffaloes, the supplies were not of any utility. About this time also, the force was augmented by the 89th British regiment from Madras. The effects of heavy work in the swamps now began to be seen in the fatal form of disease among the Anglo-Indian troops. “Constantly exposed to the vicissitudes of a tropical climate, and exhausted by the necessity of unintermitted exertion, it need not be a matter of surprise that sickness now began to thin the ranks and impair the energies of the invaders. No rank was exempt from the operation of these causes; and many officers, amongst whom were the senior naval officer, Captain Marryat; the political commissioner, Major Canning; and the Commander-in-Chief himself, were attacked with fever, during the month of June. Amongst the privates, the Europeans especially, the sickness incident to fatigue and exposure was aggravated by the defective quantity and quality of the provisions which had been supplied for their use. Relying upon the reported facility of obtaining cattle and vegetables at Rangoon, it had not been thought necessary to embark stores for protracted consumption on board the transports from Calcutta, and the Madras troops landed with a still more limited stock. As soon as the deficiency was ascertained, arrangements were made to remedy it; but in the mean time, before supplies could reach Rangoon, the troops were dependent for food upon salt meat, much of which was in a state of putrescence, and biscuit, in an equally repulsive condition, under the decomposing influence of heat and moisture. The want of sufficient and wholesome food enhanced the evil effects of the damp soil and atmosphere, and of the malaria from the decaying vegetable matter of the surrounding forests, and the hospitals were rapidly filled with sick, beyond the means available of medical treatment. Fever and dysentery were the principal maladies, and were no more than the ordinary consequences of local causes; but the scurvy and hospital gangrene, which also made their appearance, were ascribable as much to depraved habits and inadequate nourishment as to fatigue and exposure. They were also latterly, in some degree, the consequences of extreme exhaustion, forming a peculiar feature of the prevailing fever, which bore an epidemic type, and which had been felt with equal severity in Bengal. The fatal operation of these causes was enhanced by their continuance; and towards the end of the rainy season, scarcely three thousand men were fit for active duty. The arrival of adequate supplies, and more especially the change in the monsoon, restored the troops to a more healthy condition.”[294]