Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/239

 weary mile. The retching of those attacked—the groans of the dying, and the lamentations for the dead, occupied the ear incessantly night and day; graves were seen a digging in every direction, and funeral piles smoking all around, tainting the very atmosphere with human empyreumatic odour, flocks of kites and vultures hovered over the dismal scene, screaming to be deprived of their expected prey, troops of jackals prowled about at night, tearing open and robbing the newly-tenanted graves of the Mussulmen; and the short hoarse bark of the hyena, like a knell from a death's head, grated upon the startled ear; warning us of our mortality, and of his, perhaps, groping for our bones before another day's dawn. Public religious processions were frequently performed by the natives, each caste separate by itself, with all the noisy solemnity characteristic of Hindoo and Mussulman rites, the one trying to out-do the other in their supplications to their favourite deities, to abate the dreadful calamity; and, to complete the tragical scene, the savage enemy, apparently exempt from the disease, looked on composedly, from the skirts of the jungle ready to empale with their arrows any one who ventured beyond the picquets, and anticipated our extermination without any efforts of theirs to assist.

When things were in this condition, we broke ground, marched two days in succession, and