Until the middle of February, 1853, the headquarter companies at Prome had a weary time. Sickness was rampant; in a letter written at the end of November, 1852, an officer of the XVIIIth mentions that the regiment could only turn out 350 men fit to take the field. Ninety men had been buried at Rangoon, where cholera broke out a few hours after the capture of the great Pagoda; for a month the Royal Irish had been dying at the rate of almost one a day; 137 were in hospital; large numbers had broken down and been invalided out of the country. The other regiments were equally unhealthy, and out of the whole garrison of Prome the General could only count on some 900 effectives, whose numbers were daily reduced by the ravages of climate and by the strain of the guards and piquets, which, though cut down as low as safety permitted, told severely upon the troops who remained at duty. The only break in this harassing and monotonous existence was afforded by occasional reconnaissances and night attacks, in which the enemy showed themselves more anxious to murder and decapitate individual men than to close with any formed body of soldiers. Suddenly four companies of the Royal Irish were warned for an expedition to clear the line of communication, which was harassed by Myat Toon, a robber chieftain, who from his lair near Donobyu attacked the native boats in our employ on their way up the Irrawaddy with provisions for the front. The village of Donobyu was about fifty miles above Rangoon; it was connected with the Irrawaddy by a network of creeks, and surrounded by dense jungle, almost impassable from deep nullahs full of water, which cut up the ground in every direction. In this jungle Myat Toon had fortified many positions, formidable in themselves, and most difficult of access to Europeans. The sailors had made several spirited attempts to penetrate into this labyrinth, but their boats were unable to pass the barricades of logs and forest trees with which the waterways had been obstructed; and a combined force of bluejackets and soldiers, acting on land under a post-captain in the navy, was surprised and defeated with the loss of two guns. The army was now to take in hand the punishment of the seven or eight thousand guerillas who followed the fortunes of Myat Toon, and General Godwin selected Sir John Cheape to lead the avenging force, composed of a small body of Irregular Native cavalry, detachments of Madras Sappers and Madras and Bengal Artillery with one 24-pr. howitzer and a 9-pr. field-gun, two hundred of the XVIIIth under Captain A. W. F. S. Armstrong,[155] two hundred of the 51st, two hundred Sikhs, and the 67th Bengal Native Infantry regiment. Major F. Wigston, XVIIIth, was in charge of the right wing of the column, with Lieutenant F. Eteson, XVIIIth, as his staff-officer. Descending the river to within thirty-five miles of Donobyu, Cheape disembarked at Henzada, a village where a number of country bullock-carts awaited him. As he was led to believe that three or four days’ march would bring him to Myat Toon’s stockades, he decided to fill up his transport with seven or eight days’ rations, dash on his enemy, defeat him, and then hasten back to the steamers. Leaving behind him the sick, who, though it was barely a week since he left Prome, were already numerous, he plunged into an unknown country, where his guides proved useless, his information defective and misleading. He could not find the main body of Myat Toon’s men, though skirmishing dacoits hung on his flanks, and in four days he was obliged to fall back to the river for supplies. He now transferred his base to Donobyu, which was known to have been evacuated by the enemy, and sending his empty carts there by land under escort of a party of the XVIIIth, he re-embarked with the remainder of his troops for Donobyu, where he remained till the 7th of March, when the native regiment joined him, and with it a draft of recruits for the 80th and a large supply of commissariat stores. After providing for the safety of his base and of another batch of sick men, General Cheape started on his second hunt for Myat Toon, whose entrenchments he was again assured could be reached in three days. Now began a campaign, short in duration, but harassing beyond measure to the troops engaged in it. The soldiers had to feel their way along narrow paths, often obstructed by trees cut down across the track by foes, who rarely showed themselves by day, though they disturbed the bivouac by sniping shots at night.