intermittent fever, diarrhœa, and dysentery raged among all ranks; and though after a time the troops were moved into the houses of the natives, disease had taken such hold upon all ranks that in November there were not more than five hundred effectives at Chusan. The Royal Irish fared better than the other regiments, as the ships from which they drew most of their supplies were laden with stores prepared not in India, but in England; but still they suffered severely--two officers, Major R. Hammill and Lieutenant H. F. Vavasour, and about fifty of the other ranks died between July 5th and the end of the year.[124] Yet these losses were insignificant compared to those of the 26th, which from nine hundred was reduced to a strength, all told, of two hundred and ninety-one. In January, 1841, there were combined naval and military operations against the forts at the mouth of the Canton river, in which the Royal Irish took no part as they had been left to garrison Chusan; a few of the regiment, however, were present, probably invalids serving on board ship for change of air. After several batteries had been dismantled and many heavy guns spiked or otherwise disabled, the Mandarins made a treaty with the Plenipotentiary, by which they agreed to cede to us the island of Hong Kong, to pay a considerable indemnity, and to allow trade to be reopened at Canton, while on our side we undertook to restore Chusan to the Chinese. No time was lost in occupying Hong Kong, of which formal possession was taken on February 26, 1841, two days after the Royal Irish arrived there. Colonel Burrell, XVIIIth, had been the senior military officer throughout the occupation of Chusan, and very thankful must he have been when, after seeing the last of the garrison safely on board ship, he turned his back on the island which proved fatal to such numbers of his men.[125] Very soon after the expedition had been concentrated at Hong Kong it became evident that the treaty was not worth the paper it was written upon. Far from being anxious for peace, the Chinese had only sought to gain time to prepare for war. An army of labourers was strengthening the defences of Canton; an army of soldiers was being collected in the interior of China to man them; large rewards were offered for the capture of British ships and British fighting men; for a battleship a hundred thousand dollars were promised; the Admiral and the Plenipotentiary were worth fifty thousand dollars each; the other officers were rated on a descending scale, while the price of a Madras Sepoy was only fifty dollars. On the 24th of February the fleet bombarded the celebrated Bogue forts in the Canton river; five hundred guns were taken, and everyone hoped that the ships would now be allowed to push up the river and capture Canton, when all movements were temporarily arrested by the announcement that the Plenipotentiary had entered into a truce. As, however, the Chinese did not fulfil its terms, the men-of-war