Note 33 — HISTORICAL RECORD OF THE SECOND, (continued 2)

Lieutenant-Colonel Williams had been with the regiment in the West Indies. It was probably in consequence of his previous sojourn in an enervating climate that he felt, shortly after arriving in India, symptoms of chronic disease, so alarming when encountered in the heated regions of the tropics. A return to Europe was the course recommended, but Colonel Williams said, that having been honoured by his King with the command of an old distinguished corps, which he had conducted to the shores of India, he thought it was not for a soldier in the prime of life to abandon his post on the first summons, and preferred making trial of an elevated climate on the Neilgherry-hills, in hopes of rejoining his friends and comrades, with whose fortunes he wished to identify his own. The change of abode was found to prolong his life, but did not remove the complaint; and when a reluctant consent was given to depart for England, it was too late: the hand of death was approaching him, and he died at Cannanore, on the Malabar coast, whither he had been conveyed for embarkation.