Townshend wrote bitterly that Kurna was the supposed location of the Garden of Eden, while Amarah was said to have been the Garden of Tears where Adam and Eve had been banished from the Garden of Eden, saying that the latter description was quite correct, as Amarah was a "thief-ridden incubator of dysentery, sunstroke, malaria and paratyphoid". The intense heat-the average daily temperature ranged from 100 to 123 Fahrenheit-imposed immense stain on his men, who were always very thirsty and drank from the river Tigris despite warnings that the beautiful, simmering water was unsafe to drink, causing them to contact dysentery. The ships that took wounded men down the Tigris for the hospitals in Basra appeared to have ropes hanging from the deck, which were actually stalactites of human feces, as the ships lacked proper facilities for treating care of the men and the men were so closely packed together that they were unable to defecate clear of the deck.