Sketches of the campaign in northern Mexico : in eighteen hundred forty-six and seven / by an officer of the First Regiment of Ohio volunteers.

SICKNESS AT CAMP BELKNAP. 39
concerned, to manifest itself at a subsequent interesting
period.
Between Camp Belknap and the river was a swamp, about
a mile in width, through which, from the want of wagons, the
men were compelled to wade for all their provisions,-the
tent of the commissary being pitched upon the banks of the
Rio Grande. All our water, too, was brought from the river;
for the ponds in the vicinity of our camp were salt, and the
few wells that were dug were as bitter as the fountain of Marah. These supplies were carried in barrels, swung on
poles, the ends of which rested upon the aching shoulders of
the volunteers, and sinlking them knee-deep in the mire.
Much of the sickness that so thinned the ranks of the army
on the coast was perhaps induced by the severity of these
necessary labors. To their ignorance of the art of cooking,
however, must be attributed many of the common and painful complaints with which the soldiers sufferedl, for at that
time they had not penetrated far into the mysteries of the culinary science. After a few weeks' practice5 when they had
learned how best to prepare their food, that class of diseases
disappeared. While we lay at Camp B]elknap,-nearly two
weeks-about one hundred of the eight hundred, rank and
file, contained in our regiment, were daily reported on that
melancholy catalogue, the surgeon's morning return. Many
were at once disabled5 and discharged from further service.
Indeed I do not think we could have mustered more than six
hundred bayonets at Camargo, and scarcely five hundred at
Monterey, so rapidly did the climate, like a skillful anatomist, designate and discard all the unsound men. The great