immense force collected for their destruction without the deepest alarm; and while the rainy seasons still suspended operations, they held frequent conferences on the state of their affairs; but the violent dissensions that had long reigned between their two principal heads, Kurreem and Cheetoo, caused them to break up without having formed any definite plan.
The invading armies began to move as soon as the rains had abated, and while the swelling of the rivers might yet impede the rapid movements of their adversaries; but the opening of the campaign was unexpectedly retarded by a new and more terrible foe, the Indian cholera morbus, the virulence of which appears to have been increased by the crowded state of our camps. The disease first broke out at Jessore, a populous and unhealthy city near the pestiferous Sunderbunds. From Jessore it ascended the valley of the Ganges, till it reached the camp of General Hardyman about the beginning of October; but this being in a dry, healthy country, the troops suffered comparatively little. Continuing its course westward, it fell with extraordinary violence upon the army-corps of Lord Hastings, then encamped in a low, unhealthy part of Bundlecund: for about ten days that the disease raged with its greatest fury, the whole camp was an hospital. The mortality amounted to about a tenth of the whole number collected there. The camp was abandoned, and the army continued for some days to move to the eastward, in the hope of finding relief in a better climate; but each day's march many dead and dying were abandoned, and many more fell down on the road – so many that it was not possible to furnish the means for carrying them on. Nothing was heard along the line of march but groans, and shrieks, and lamentations; even the healthy were broken in spirit and incapable of exertion; and, for the time, the efficiency of this fine army seemed to be entirely destroyed. Towards the end of November, when the army reached a healthy station at Erech, on the right bank of
