There had been some skirmishing with the invaders of Cachar, in the north-west, where General Shuldham was on guard, but the physical difficulties of forest and mountain rendered military operations extremely difficult; so that the second step was the occupation of Arracan by General Richards, with the 44th, 54th, and seven Sepoy battalions. Little else was done in that province, and the troops suffered terribly from sickness. Soon after Rangoon was taken by Sir A. Campbell, who had the 13th, 38th, and 41st Regiments, with a large force of Sepoys, as well as the remains of the 44th and 54th line Battalions, and this formed the base of all the future operations. The war throughout was peculiar. The chief villages and towns were on or near the banks of the Irrawaddy and its tributaries, and the whole district was covered by dense forests and marshes through which ran poor tracks which could scarcely be deemed roads. The enemy fought with bravery, but rarely ventured to meet the invader in the open, basing their defence on skilfully constructed stockades, which they rapidly erected. The physical difficulties were great, and led to delay, which in its turn led to a steady decimation of the white troops. Between June 1824 and March 1825, out of an average force of about 2800 men nearly 1400 had died. It was jungle fighting under the most severe conditions, and the whole strategic plan of attack was the successive assault and possession of the chief towns until the capital itself was reached. But little headway was made at first. The first attempts on Kemmendine and Donabu failed; raids on Tavoy, Mergui, Tenasserim, Martaban, and Yé succeeded. There were constant skirmishes round Rangoon, in which the 38th and 13th especially distinguished themselves; and as Havelock says, in his _Memoirs of the Three Campaigns_, the enemy “acquitted themselves like men. They fell in heaps under the bayonet.”