From this moment offensive operations seemed at an end: we were surrounded with abundance, our days were occupied in the sports of the field, our evenings passed at each others' quarters in idle and pleasant conversation, pay was issued almost to the day that it was due. Provisions of all descriptions were offered for sale at a very low rate: tea, sugar, and coffee, were not half the price of the same in England; wines, brandy, hollands, and liqueurs, might be purchased for a mere trifle; and fat fowls or ducks for tenpence the pair. In this land of plenty we were lulled into a fatal security, for, about the 20th, the soldiers fell ill, staggered, and dropped in the ranks, seized by dreadful fevers[10], and with such rapidity did this malady extend, that in fourteen days, twelve thousand and eighty six soldiers were in hospital on board ship, or sent to England; the deaths were numerous, and sometimes sudden; convalescence hardly ever secure; the disorders ultimately destroying the constitution, and causing eventually the destruction of thousands in far distant climes. The natives now became ill, and informed us that one-third of them were confined to their beds every autumn until the frosty weather set in, which checked the exhalations from the earth, and gave new tone to their debilitated frames, and thereby stopped the progress of the complaint. Independently of the records of the unhealthiness of these islands, where every object depicts it in the most forcible manner, the bottom of every canal that has communication with the sea is thickly covered with an ooze, which, when the tide is out, emits a most offensive effluvium; and every ditch that is filled with water, is loaded with animal and vegetable substances. If persons living in these islands from their infancy, who practise a cleanliness that cannot be excelled, and live in good houses, cannot prevent the effects of the climate, it may readily be supposed how much more a foreign army must suffer. The inhabitants informed us, that in the preceding autumn, two hundred French troops were quartered in the village, out of whom one hundred and sixty had the fever, and seventy of them died. Our landing had excited a great sensation in the north of France; so much so, that numerous corps of the national guards marched to the succour of Antwerp, only garrisoned when we first made our descent on the coast with three thousand men, besides the eight thousand sailors on board the fleet, that had retired up the Scheldt. Many of the national guards suffered from the climate, and shortly returned to their families with ruined constitutions.