This Monument is erected
by the non-commissioned officers
of the above Regt
As a token of respect
May They rest in peace.
387
The undated and unsigned manuscript report held in the archives of the Regimental Museum of the King's Own Royal Border Regiment in Carlisle reads as follows:
"As no opportunity presented itself of obtaining a passage in one of HM's Ships to Chusan I deemed it advisable after waiting over three months, to delay no longer and accordingly chartered a native boat in which I left for Chusan on the 20th inst.
I found that the reports as to the dilapidated condition of the monument in question were by no means exaggerated. The structure, which is an oblong brick cube about 6 feet high and 4 feet wide and deep, with stuccoed edges and a granite tablet on which the inscription is cut inserted on the eastern side, is in a wretched state of decay. Many of the corner bricks have crumbled away and in a very few years the whole block will fall to pieces unless some repairs are speedily undertaken. At the back, or South side of the monument, a mud cottage forming one of a row of four is built, the roof of which almost touches the summit of it and adds materially to the progress of the decay by the drippings from it which sink into the ground at its base. These cottages are tenanted by four families of squatters and in front of them - the back being towards the monument - are two other monuments, oblong in shape and about three feet high, which appear to be used as tables or beds, as the case may be, by the squatters. One of them, erected to Captain Colin Campbell of the 55th Regt, who died of a wound received in action at Chapoo, has lost a large portion of the base upon which the stone bearing the inscription lies and must soon fall to pieces unless the progress of the decay be arrested.