Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/124

 for the space of three hundred miles, a single traveller that was either going to town or returning from it; and in the houses where I stopped there was not a person who conceived his business of that importance to oblige him to go there while the season lasted.

From the 1st of November till the month of May the country affords a picture widely different; every thing resumes new life; trade is re-animated; the suspended communications re-commence; the roads are covered with waggons, bringing from all quarters the produce of the exterior; an immense number of carriages and single-horse chaises roll rapidly {6} along, and keep up a continual correspondence between the city and the neighbouring plantations, where the owners spend the greatest part of the season. In short, the commercial activity renders Charleston just as lively as it is dull and melancholy in the summer.

It is generally thought at Charleston that the yellow fever which rages there, as well as at Savannah, every summer, is analogous to that which breaks out in the colonies, and that it is not contagious: but this opinion is not universally adopted in the northern cities. It is a fact, that whenever the disease is prevalent at New York and Philadelphia, the natives are as apt to contract it as foreigners, and that they remove as soon as they learn that their neighbours are attacked with it. Notwithstanding they have a very valuable advantage that is not to be found at Charleston, which is, that the country places bordering on Philadelphia and New York are pleasant and salubrious; and that at two or three miles' distance the inhabitants are in perfect safety, though even the disorder committed the greatest ravages in the above-mentioned towns.

I took the liberty to make this slight digression, for the