Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/188

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168
ADVICE TO OFFICERS

have shares of ice; and,by paying forty or sixty rupees during the season, they have as much ice as they require.

American ice is imported in great abundance, and is sometimes as cheap as an anna a pound.

The surgeons of all hospitals are permitted to indent on the commissariat for ice, on its being thought necessary for their patients.

Saltpetre and Glauber salts are extensively used for cooling liquids. These salts are abundantly developed from the soil in Upper India, especially in Oude and Behar, and are consequently obtained at a cheap rate.

When water is once cool, the grand object is to keep it cool, and the best thing is to put it into a bottle, and enclose it in sack of quilted cotton or in a pith case called solar. Many combine their larder and their ice-pad, and thus are able to preserve meat a couple of days.

16. SMOKING.—Tobacco-smoking is a very common habit; so much so that two-thirds of the European population indulge in it; nor is the vice contracted in India only. A large proportion of cadets acquire the habit in England, and are not a little proud of their accomplishment, Young men think it manly to be able to blow as big a cloud as their commanding officer. Their breath not only smells of an old pipe,but everything that comes out of their house—a book, a