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 when I traversed swamps, as I had made it a rule to give them an extra ration of rum or wine whenever they got wet.

What a contrast between the climate of New Holland, and that of the United States, to which our fellow-countrymen are so fond of resorting! Ague, marsh fever, and dyspeptic complaints, soon attack the unlucky emigrant who seeks a home in the dreary back settlements of the latter country, amidst fetid morasses, and dank unwholesome forests, where he is oppressed in summer by a close, moist, almost tropical heat, and in winter experiences the violent gradation to a temperature colder than he has ever experienced in his native land. In the southern states, especially Louisiana, yellow fevers, tumefied livers, et hoc genus omne, are prevalent; and although Texas is said to possess a healthy climate, yet the adjoining countries have been proved to be so little suited to English constitutions, that I should be rather diffident of trusting to the climate of Texas, unless there existed a very marked difference in the physical conformation of that country compared with Mexico and Louisiana.

Experience is our only guide to enable us to form an opinion of the salubrity of the climate of any country: Hong-Kong was always supposed to be a healthy island, and yet we now learn, after a frightful mortality among our troops and seamen in that settlement, that in order to guard against disease there, it is necessary to take greater care of oneself,