Full of strength, and the vigour of youth, the new soldiers soon became the victims of disease; indulging immoderately perhaps in the pernicious rum, and ignorant of its baneful effects, they lay prostrate in dreadful numbers beneath the dreadful pestilence. So great a sacrifice of human life had not taken place in all our hardest battles combined together, and the oldest inhabitants here tried in vain to recollect a more severe and afflictive dispensation.--With regard to the officers, from the Colonel to the youngest Ensign, including staff, the greater number were carried away.[36] [36] From the year 1819 to 1826, the 50th and 92nd lost 1409 men, which is at the rate of 88 per year each regiment, in the eight years. The 33rd and 91st, from 1822 to 1829, (eight years,) lost 1036 men, or about 65 a year, each. The 77th, from 1824 to 1829, (six years,) lost 433, or 72 men a year. The 22nd and 84th, lost from 1826 to 1829, (three years,) 501, or 84 men a year, each regiment. In Jamaica the most unhealthy months in the year are August and November, and the most healthy are May and June; in the former months the mortality is four times as great as in the latter months. Dividing the year into two equal parts, the "healthy season" may be considered as extending from February to July, the "unhealthy season" from August to January. The deaths in these two seasons are as ten to twenty-seven. The seasoning, or period of severe mortality, generally occurs in the latter half of the year in which a regiment arrives. Among the 50th, the fever broke out in July 1819. The 92nd Highlanders did not arrive until the early part of the summer in that year, and were therefore badly seasoned. Being a long time companions in the same brigade, the meeting between these corps was consequently joyous, and in order to celebrate the happy event they dined together in the camp. Sobriety of course was not a member of the party; and, as might well be expected, the hospital was not without its portion of the company on the ensuing day. Predisposed as the men in general were by former habits, as well as by frequent exposure to the nightly dews, the malady broke out with violence unparalleled among both regiments; from that period it raged throughout the island, sweeping all before it, and even among the civilians the mortality was unbounded.