2-889-583 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Tablet in St. Giles's Cathedral, Edinburgh, to the Memory of 669 Souls who Died on the Indus and in Scinde, 1850. '...monumental sculpture, from the chisel of Mr. Steell...dedicated to...six hundred persons belonging to and connected with the [78th (Highlanders Regiment of Foot]...This fearful mortality was the result, not of the fatal chances of war, but of the still more deadly influences of a pestilential climate.' They died in Sindh, formerly in India, now in Pakistan. 'The design of the bas-relief consists of a single female figure...in an attitude expressive of the prostration of deep and settled grief, the nerveless arms extended over the end of a sarcophagus...The cause of the immense mortality the monument commemorates is indicated by a branch of the upas tree being entwined round the sword - the subtle plague proving more deadly and powerful than the sharp and polished steel'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.