ENPages
p. 71
Grips of a soreness all over my bones. Well, i say thats a bad complaint but think it will be very easily cured. Shure Guv & Av I might make bould to tell yere honour the Dacthur O' our regiment always used to be given me a glass o brandy when I ill O this complaint & nothing else niver found did me any good. Well I says, what is making you ill at this time. Shure Guv All I cant till ye unless its the duff. The duff (a kind of plump pudding I says have you been eating too much. Faith no Yere' honour says he but its alive & the salt mate isn't fit for a nigger. I excused paddys dodge to get a glass of brandy from me & as he is the healthiest man in the ship, I ordered him a dose of Castor Oil, put him on the low diet his pains were very soon cured. One of the invalids
p. 72
below. I find to be one of the number who left Edin. for the Crimea in the Golden Fleece. (the 4th regt.) some three or four years ago. he took ill going up country & has been invalided to the Cape The weather is beautiful & much cooler now. We have got into the South East trade winds now. & the ship goes spanking along quite gaily. We expect to reach the Cape (DV) in 3 or 4 weeks The Capt. promised me a copy of the log which I must make use of Sunday. March 14th 1858. Is always Sunday everywhere although there be very little to mark it the detachment of artillery are mustered on deck along with those of the invalids who are able to be on deck. We had no service today as [D scored through] Lt. Dadson is laid up
p. 73
with his knee joint & I do not know the English Church service sufficiently well to undertake it. Read 14 chapters in Genesis this morning. The day is beautiful & clear & the sun rather hot during the day the wind is still keeping fair & the Capt. fully expects to run down to the Cape in 24 days. Tuesday Mch: 9 till Friday Mch: 26th 1858 During this time we have been grad- ually making our way down to the Cape of Good Hope. No further serious illness has occurred on board with the exception of one of the soldiers who was knocked down by sun stroke. he has however recovered & is now quite well. We have had on the whole fine weather occasional squalls & one night it blew very hard but it cleared before morning & we have since had fine weather. Our
p. 74
friend the irish soldier has been up to his old tricks on St. Patricks day 17th he was all in his glory & tried sev eral means of obtaining grog. Among the others was this one. he went up to the general (Salter) who we have on board & says I big yere pardon Sur but I was jist goin to ax ye to be kind enough to spake to the Leftenant & the Docthur to see if they'd be afther givin us grog the day thus bein St.Pat- thricks day & its mighty kind Id be thinking it o ye. The General said he had nothing to do with these things My hospital orderlies were at me in the evening but I did not accede to their request. Two thirds of the soldiers are Irishmen & it was a great disappointment to them you may be sure. Old Billy the goat is sadly annoyed in the afternoons he often gets a pain or a
p. 75
belaying pin tied to his tail & giving a groan of he goes round the deck at full speed. the dogs chasing & barking at him Today 26th. I had a muster of all the natives who have been brought down to look after horses we are to take up with us to examine whether they were in health You may just fancy 40 of these black savages standing all round me in a group, the most dirty disgusting looking wretches. ima ginable. I singled out 8 who were labouring under a contagious skin disease to be kept separate from the others. I performed an operation on one of them under chloroform this afternoon he was rather in a funk & the others you may be sure were not less funky. The weather for the