The camp of my regiment was pitched, as I have said, on the extreme
left of the besieging force, on the rear slope of the ridge. We were
completely hidden from any view of the city, and but for the sound
of the firing close by, which seldom ceased day or night, might have
fancied ourselves far away from Delhi.

Cholera still carried off its victims from our midst, and the very night
of our arrival I performed the melancholy duty of reading the Burial
Service over five gallant fellows of the Grenadier Company who had died
that day from the fell disease.

The heat was insupportable, the thermometer under the shade of my tent
marking 112°F.; and to add to our misery there came upon us a plague
of flies, the like of which I verily believe had not been on the
earth since Moses in that manner brought down the wrath of God on the
Egyptians. They literally darkened the air, descending in myriads and
covering everything in our midst. Foul and loathsome they were, and we
knew that they owed their existence to, and fattened on, the putrid
corpses of dead men and animals which lay rotting and unburied in
every direction. The air was tainted with corruption, and the heat was
intense. Can it, then, be wondered that pestilence increased daily in
the camp, claiming its victims from every regiment, native as well as
European?

About this time many spies were captured and executed; in fact, so many
prisoners were taken by the pickets that it was ordered that for the
future, instead of being sent under escort to the camp for trial, they
should be summarily dealt with by the officers commanding pickets.

On the evening of July 2 I was sent, in command of fifty men, to relieve