This was well, but it did not redeem the situation. Natives regarded Camargo as the sickliest point in the region, and the freshets had made it worse. Every breath of air raised a stifling cloud of dust from the dried and pulverized mud. Barren hills of limestone cut off the breeze to a great extent and concentrated the fierce heat, frequently sending the mercury in "this hottest of all hot places," as a soldier called the town, to 112 degrees. Scorpions, tarantulas, mosquitos and centipedes abounded. There was a plague of small frogs. "Last night the ants tried to carry me off in my sleep," wrote a soldier. The only drinking water came from the San Juan, and it made trouble. The ignorance of the volunteers about caring for their health was fairly matched by that of their officers and medical men. Days of sweltering under a cruel sun, with nothing to do and apparently nothing to hope for, were followed by cool nights and heavy dews, the heart-rending groans of the sick, and the yelping of numberless prairie wolves. In almost all the volunteer regiments at least one third of the men were ill, wrote Meade, and in many of them, one half. The three volleys at the graves became well-nigh a continuous roll; and the "dead march" was played so often that, as an officer said, the very birds knew it. The First Tennessee, originally 1040 prime young fellows, was reduced by deaths and discharges to less than 500. "Oh, what a _horror_ I have for Camargo," exclaimed one of the generals; "it is a Yawning Grave Yard"; a thousand soldiers torn and mangled on the battlefield would be nothing to its suffering and dying regiments.[10.17] And all this appears to have been unnecessary. As we have seen, Taylor had no intention of using more than about 6000 men in the near future; and there were salubrious places not only near the Gulf but near Camargo. No local maladies prevailed in the Rio Grande valley, said Meade. "There are no causes for disease," wrote Captain Henry. The climate of that region, said an Illinois officer, equalled in salubrity the climate of "any Western state." Reynosa was described by the General Sedgwick of Civil War days as perfectly healthy. Mier, selected the following year, with a particular view to salubrity, as the site of a camp for instruction, lay near by on the road to Monterey; and Cerralvo, farther along on the same route, was a kind of Eden. The best comment on what the General did is what the General himself said. His first duty, he told Senator Crittenden, was to place the troops in a healthful situation.[10.17] [MEXICAN PREPARATIONS]