its ill-repute chiefly from the ravages of its yellow fever epidemics. During their prevalence, the newly arrived certainly incurs tremendous risk, but at other times, and to the old settler in all times, there is little to apprehend. Those who suffer most from the winters at home, the narrow and weak-chested, and scrofulous, enjoy excellent health in this colony. With reference to the effect of climate here on the lower animals, it may be mentioned, that horses quite done up for service from rheumatism or founder in cold climates, regain their health and become serviceable here. It is not to be concealed, however, that the nevervarying warmth and luxuriousness of the climate induces inaction and apathy among the inhabitants*, and that some endemic diseases (such as painters' colic and obstinate intermittent, and the anæmic cachexy), in individual cases, require a temporary and sometimes a permanent, removal from the colony.t

*

[Accordingly, stronger motives seem to be required in these regions — tropical regions generally-for exertion, whether bodily or mental, than in colder climates; but the motives to exertion in the former are commonly less than in the latter. It is not surprising, therefore, that indolence should have become there a habit, and that the dolce far niente can be appreciated more fully in the West Indies even than in Italy, where, when powerful motives have operated,- as also in Greece, -the greatest of human energies have been developed.]-ED.

For much interesting information on the peculiarities of British Guiana, the reader is referred to Sir Robert Schomburgk's description, Major Tullock's Army Statistics, Dr. Shier's Report on Thorough Drainage, and the First Report of the Demerara Railway Company.

DIVISION I.

CHAPTER I.

BEGINNING OF THE EPIDEMIC.

ON Sunday Morning, I believe the 8th day of April, 1837, Dr. Alleyne and I were conversing in my house on the health of the town. He stated to me, that he had had some cases that terminated fatally at the time when the severity of the symptoms had ceased, and when he supposed the patient convalescent; that he had been quite taken aback by the suddenness and unexpectedness of the deaths. I, in return, stated to him, that I had at that moment a case which I believed to be yellow fever, and proposed that we should see it together. On our way to see my patient, Dr. Alleyne suggested that we should first go to the house of Rankin, druggist, at the corner of Robb's Stelling, Water Street, where he had a case similar to those referred to as having ended fatally. On being seen, we agreed that this was a case of yellow fever. I now forget what were the chief symptoms present, but the patient died next morning. name was Rainey.

His

On proceeding to my patient, we met Dr. Hutson, and, he joining us, we examined the case. The symptoms we considered were certainly those of yellow fever, as far as our bookknowledge enabled us to decide.

The name of my patient was Inch, one of two brothers, young Irishmen, who had arrived in the colony two or three months previously and acted as plantation overseers for a short time. One or two weeks before his illness, he and his brother had hired a ground floor of a house in Water Street, in the inner side of the street immediately opposite the premises of Messrs. Conyers and Harvey, and which was in no way raised off the ground, and commenced there a small shop, in which they sold porter, plantains, salt fish, tobacco, and such miscellaneous wares

as are to be found in hucksters' shops. All these articles were in great confusion, few of them being on shelves, and the rest without order covering the floor. The room was very small, about 8 × 20 feet, being merely the centre gateway of the house partitioned off, and certainly not one-third of the ground-floor of the building. The rest of the ground-floor was occupied as a store for paints and oils by a house-painter named M‘Farlane. M'Farlane (a European not long in the Colony) with his wife and child (whites) and a little dirty white girl as servant, lived in the second story of the house. Inch lived in the same little room which formed his shop, and slept there in a hammock which he unslung during the day. I well remember when I made my first visit to him, how my nose was offended by the sickening smell of rotten salt fish, tobacco, damp, and dirt. I attended him during two or three days in this filthy hole. But on the day before Drs. Alleyne and Hutson saw him with me, I had him removed to a side building in the same yard on the second floor, the roof of which was so low that I could not stand erect in it. It was clean, however, and not so warm as might have been expected in so confined a place, in consequence of the roof being of shingles, and the room being the most windward of all the buildings. The day on which Drs. Alleyne and Hutson saw Inch with me he was yellow, his gums oozing black blood, and also a sore which was on his leg. The heat of surface was moderate. In the evening he had black vomit. This patient, notwithstanding the severity of his symptoms, recovered.* M'Farlane's family were never attacked. The next case was that of the brother, who, although not residing in the same shop before the outbreak of the disease (but at Mr. Burford's, about 150 yards further north on the same side of the same street), was incessant in his attention by day and night to his sick brother. He sickened during his brother's convalescence, and died on the fifth day with black vomit, and with yellow skin and purple patches after death. These brothers Inch were muscular, blond, of sober habits, and between twentyone and twenty-five years old. The next case was that of Mr. Coey, on the same side of Water Street, and about 150

* He died in Leguan about 1st February, 1847, of the effects of intemperance.

yards south of Inch's shop, or midway between that shop and Rankin's. It was upwards of ten years since he had first arrived in the Colony, but he had lately returned from a visit to his native country, Ireland. He recovered. The previous cases which Dr. Alleyne had attended were a few yards further south, at Messrs. Parker and Garrett's at the corner of Regent and Water Street, the inner side; and at Richard's (the baker) in Regent Street, on its water side, about midway between Water Street and Vlissingen Sluice. Such, and in the healthiest month of the year, was the beginning of an epidemic disease, of which the oldest practitioner of the town had no previous personal knowledge, and which for years spread death among the new settlers, sailors, and soldiers, till Demerara became a byeword.

There is a tradition of two similar, though not so long continued, epidemics, one beginning in 1793, about nineteen years after the founding of Stabrock (now Georgetown), and another in 1819, which was exceedingly virulent, but which seemed to be suddenly stopped after about nine months' devastations. The epidemic of 1819 commenced at the stores of Mr. Simpson and Mr. Kernon, in America Street. Of one hundred whites (merchants and clerks) who inhabited America Street and neighbouring parts of Water Street alone, thirty-three died.

CHAP. II.

PROGRESS AND HABITS OF THE EPIDEMIC.

THE epidemic of 1837, which thus first appeared in Regent Street and Water Street, the centre of which space is Robb's Stelling, soon spread itself along the length of the city. Water Street, or its immediate vicinity, was always the portion chiefly affected, although a few straggling cases were to be met with in the back parts of the town, and one case (that of the late Mrs. D.) even as far back as at the manager's house of Plantation Vlissingen.

After the appearance of the disease in the city it was noticed. in the mercantile shipping, as will be illustrated by reference to the table of mortality among the sailors. Cases then made their appearance in the Essequibo coasts and islands, and in New Amsterdam, Berbice. The troops suffered most in 1839, but what retarding circumstance (perhaps that of unsuitable subjects) acted in their case, I have no means of ascertaining. *

* The manner in which the troops escaped at times and at times suffered from yellow fever in British Guiana, and in some of the other stations of the Windward and Leeward Island Command, between 1837 and 1841, is instructive and worthy of note. The following particulars are from the Inspector General's Reports,—the officer in charge of the medical department in the West Indies :

"In the quarter ending on the 30th of June, 1837," [when yellow fever prevailed, as described by the author in Georgetown, Demerara,]" the troops there and at the outposts were exceedingly healthy. In July the disease began to appear amongst the officers of the garrison and their families; and, by the end of August, scarcely one had escaped an attack. Five officers died: the women and children suffered in proportion. About the end of August the fever began to appear amongst the non-commissioned officers and privates: out of 32 attacked, 15 died. Intermittent fever was at the same time very prevalent: 1,435 cases came under treatment.

"In St. Vincent, in 1837, the troops are reported to have been healthy, although the coloured and black population suffered much from 'fever of the typhoid type.' The disease was suddenly arrested on the setting in of the rainy season with unusual violence.

"In Trinidad, early in May, 1838, fever occurred among the troops at St. James and St. Joseph's: 15 died out of 109 treated: a draft of young Irishmen, just then arrived, suffered most. The mortality amongst the inhabitants of Port of Spain was even, proportionally, greater than amongst the military.

"In Dominica, this year, during the quarter ending the 30th of June, out