Catharine Grace Loch, Royal Red Cross, Senior Lady Superintendent Queen Alexandra's Military Nursing Service for India : a memoir / edited by A.F. Bradshaw.

  • Loch, Catharine Grace, 1854-1904.
Date:
1905
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Catharine Grace Loch, Royal Red Cross, Senior Lady Superintendent Queen Alexandra's Military Nursing Service for India : a memoir / edited by A.F. Bradshaw. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Incidents of the Punjab climate soon attracted Miss Loch’s attention. She wrote:— When a dust-storm comes on it comes as a tearino- O wind which bursts the doors open in spite of bolts, the dust rises in thick clouds till the sun is quite hidden, it is like a thick fog; one^s eyes are all dried up and one breathes the dust, chews it and scrunches it, and it gets into the house, and makes everything deep in a thick layer of sand. Some days later she adds:— This certainly is an odd climate. Here am 1 sitting at six o'clock with one feeble candle—for luckily I had it in my room, if not I could certainly not have ventured out in the verandah to get one from the dining-room. Yesterday we had more or less sandstorm all day and thunder, and the thermometer went down 43°—only think, in the atternoon we had to sit in big shawls, it was so cold, and when we drove out we had to wrap our legs in thick plaids. Then this morning (May 2) was simply glorio\is, with the most beautiful clear sky and fresh air, and the sun was not at all unbearable at nine o’clock ; and this evening, about five o'clock, we suddenly got the worst sandstorm I have seen yet. 1 wonder whether the plague of darkness in Egypt was a sand- storm ! I exj)ect it was. We had the most fearful wind which lasted till half-past nine, and then went down as suddenly as it began—and thunder and lightning. The dust-storm was so thick that we could not see any- thing, not a ghost of the cookhouse nor the soldiers' quarters opj)osite, only just the pillars of our own verandah. ]\Iay 8.—I have just been looking at the