191
SIND DISTRICT OF THE ARMY.
37. The lines of the 30th Regiment N.I. are on the whole good. They would be greatly
improved by having an open verandah built along the front of the pendalls to keep the sun off
the sepoys' rooms; and, also, they should be prevented building up their doorways, which they
do on account of the cold, until they leave merely sufficient space to creep in and out. The
hospital is a good one and the accommodation sufficient; but no remedy has been provided for
the objection I took the year before last, to the numerous blocks of houses for commissariat
followers who crowd round the hospital. There being no fireplace as in the other hospitals
at Jacobabad, a stove is being made for heating this one.
38. In last year's report the accommodation for the men of the 1st Regiment Sind Horse
was described as very unsatisfactory. The space is far too limited, each room represents a
cube of 8 feet; the floor is not raised; there are no ventilators, neither any outside verandah. I
was told, however, that sanction had been obtained for new ones being erected. The hospital
Sccommodation would be much too limited for a line regiment; but owing to the system ob-
taining in these mounted regiments, mentioned elsewhere, of allowing the moderately sick to
be treated as out-patients, the inconvenience is not felt. The fireplace, an absolute necessity
in the winter months at this station, which I recommended to be built at my former inspection,
has not yet been made. The repair of the hospital is good, but it has the same objection as
the others have, viz., the houses of camp followers abutting on it.
39. The huts, or rather hovels, of the men of the 2nd Regiment Sind Horse were in even
a worse condition, if possible, than when I inspected them in 1871. They are totally unfit
to live in, and that this regiment does not present a much higher deathrate, is only an in-
stance of that peculiar compensating power of nature which accommodates the human system to
exist under the most adverse circumstances. They have been, however, formally condemned
and sanction obtained for new ones being built. Hospital accommodation is sufficient on the
principle stated when speaking of that for the 1st Regiment. No remedy, I fear, can be ap-
plied to remove the great objection complained of in respect to its site, the lines being im-
mediately in front, the married men's quarters close behind. The former are kept as clean as
circumstances will admit of; the latter are considered sacred, and their sanitary condition,
therefore, can be more easily imagined than described.
40. With respect to the lines of the 3rd Regiment described in my previous report, I have
nothing to add. They are as nearly perfect as buildings of this description can be, and it is to
be hoped that the new ones about to be constructed will be 'built on the same model. The
description given of the hospital of the 2nd Regiment will apply equally well to this one, as
they are both under one roof—a partition wall merely separates the one hospital from the other.
41. In speaking of the water-supply for Kurrachee, the staff surgeon in his sanitary re-
port for the station says it " is ample, and may be called good from the commissariat wells,"
even from the first part of this opinion I must differ, and from the last dissent in t o t o .
A s
in the following remarks I am confining them entirely to the water used by the native regiment,
I must particularize the well from which it procures its supply. This is situated about a quar-
ter of a mile distant from the lines, and is termed a commissariat well, but it is not the one
from which the 66th Regiment receives its water. It lies some 250 yards off from the lines of
the commissariat followers, and is sufficiently abundant even in the hot season. But from its
situation near the lines of the followers, in which there is a latrine, and the ground sloping
towards the well, there exists more than a suspicion of sewage contamination. In the report
of the Sanitary Commissioner for 1869, the Chemical Analyser to Government gives a detailed
account of the analysis of the other commissariat well which supplies the 66th Regiment.
He pronounces it bad in consequence of mineral impurities and suspicion of sewage contami-
nation. As he has likewise reported on the well which supplies the artillery and describes
it also as bad, both as regards quantity and quality of mineral impurities, it is not unreasonable
to conclude that this other well—the one frequented by the native regiment and which lies
nearly in a line between the two—will, likewise, contain more or less of the same impurities,
in addition to the certainty of its being contaminated with sewage. That the want of good
water for Kurrachee has been a long acknowledged fact, is sufficiently shown by the numerous
schemes—amounting to ten—which since the year 1845 have been projected in order to obtain
it; but, after more or less discussion and hopes held out of seeing one or other of the number
carried into effect, all have been laid aside, chiefly on the score of expense. During the visit
of the Viceroy to Kurrachee in November last, the municipality brought to his Excellency's
notice this pressing necessity of supplying the town and camp with good water, and trusted
Government would be induced to help them in carrying to completion some well-digested
scheme for supplying this desideratum. Lord Northbrook's reply was sufficiently encouraging
to afford reasonable hopes that ere long this reproach to Kurrachee will be removed.
42. An evil of a similar nature to the one just recorded exists at Haidarabad. The 29th
N.I. or 2nd Belooch Regiment is entirely dependent for its water supply on 3 wells, situated
near the bank of a nullah, which, on the subsidence of the Indus, contains stagnant water,
loaded with low forms of animal and vegetable life. Contamination of the adjoining wells is,