The scourge, however, proved a blessing in the end, as our ills often do, by turning attention to the necessity of securing regular supplies of vegetable food, the acids of which science had determined to be the preventive of scorbutic affections. This led to the clearing, draining and cultivation of large bodies of the Titi Swamp, a process which, once begun, was continued throughout the period of English rule, until the town was surrounded by smiling gardens, extending westward almost to Bayou Chico, of which this generation has evidence in the absence of forest from the district and its meadow-like appearance, as well as its intersections of choked up ditches and drains. In October, 1766, there was an exhibition in Pensacola of the cruelty with which the British soldier was treated in the last century. For absence without leave, James Baker Mattross of the Royal Artillery received 100 lashes under sentence of a court-martial. Harsh as this sentence may seem, it was mild and humane compared with what was inflicted in other instances at other military posts. Soldiers of the Royal American regiment, stationed at Detroit, were punished for rioting, as follows:[3] James Wilkins, Derby McCaffny, and Sargeant Deck 1000 lashes each, whilst fortunate Corporal Saums escaped with only 500, but who, even in his luck, was yet five times less lucky than the royal artilleryman at Pensacola. These terrible inflictions provoke inquiry as to the dermal texture of the backs of the British soldiery of the eighteenth century. With the possibility of such suffering before them, we can appreciate the joy with which Richard Harris of the Thirty-first regiment, charged with stealing chickens, and Lewis Crow on trial for selling liquor, who were tried by court-martial at the same time as Mattross, received their respective findings of not guilty. ----- Footnote 3: Canadian Archives (Haldimand Collection), B. 22, p. 262. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VIII. General Bouquet—General Haldimand. Early in 1765 General Henry Bouquet having been assigned to the command of the southern military district of the colonies, of which Pensacola was the headquarters, sailed from Philadelphia in a small schooner for that place. He arrived there in the early spring, and on the following September died.[4] Of the day and cause of his death nothing seems to be known. Of the fact that his grave was marked by a monument, there is the most conclusive proof.[5]