pay
its own
future expenses, and likewise, that the site now proposed for the Military Hospital is not within the ground which was allotted for Cantonments and which allotment has been approved and sanctioned by recent despatches.
In connection with the preceding remarks it is almost superfluous to add that by far the most valuable part of the Brown Lands in this Colony, those which are washed by the Harbour and which are consequently peculiarly adapted for mercantile purposes, are not to be dwelt upon nor need it be said that by assigning them to other purposes the Revenue of the Island must be exactly lessened in the proportion that they are so allotted.
The Governor, however, is fully sensible
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sensible that the health and comfort of the Troops is, and always must be, a primary consideration, and he would have refrained from pointing out the above drawbacks, which he sees to the plan proposed in your letter, had his personal observation led him to admit the principle on which the site for the Hospital has been selected, but when he looks to the undeniable facts that the sea locations in this Colony suffered at least to an equal degree with all others during the sickly period of last season, that intelligence from every part of Asia leads to the belief that the year was particularly unhealthy, that the crews of Her Majesty's Ships and the merchant vessels and transports in the Harbour were proportionably, as severely visited.