Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/524

508 mountain which had been filled up by fine soil which had resulted from the wearing down of the higher parts of the mountain (alluvial soil). That some doubt should be thrown on the decision of the commission which had adopted my views on the influence of the natural state of the soil on cholera was not to be wondered at. I spared no pains, however, in going to the Krain and Karst Mountains, where cholera apparently was raging on a bare, rocky soil, and instead of contradiction I found a further corroboration of my views. The towns lying among these mountains were found to suffer from an affection which unquestionably proceeds from the soil—namely, ague. The mountains are freely cleft, and the clefts are filled with porous soil, allowing of the free percolation of water and air, so as to be nothing more than an alluvial soil. Here streams rush down the mountain-side, turn off at its base, and run on richer still in water. You may often find there a cleft having the shape of a funnel, filled with porous earth; the nature of the cleft and its contained earth may be determined by sinking a so-called Dolione, when the bottom will be found to be solid stone. Through the Adelsberger growth the rapid Poik flows; and on the other side of the mountain in which the grotto is situated the waters of the Poik roll off under the name of the Unze; the Unze again flows off at the base of a mountain, as a navigable river, on the other side of Laybach. As I proceeded from Laybach to Novomsto (Neustadtl), I saw shining in the distance before me and far below the mountain a village, which turned out to be Rasderto, where I learned from my companion, a schoolmaster, that ague prevailed, and, indeed, I found many sufferers confined to bed from this complaint. Rasderto lies below the sites which the cholera infested. At the base of the rocky hills on which Rasderto is situated, there flows a stream which is so powerful that it turns a mill.

In order to study the cholera at Malta I proceeded thither in 1868 at my own expense. Mr. John Simon procured me the necessary introductions. On arriving in the harbor of Valetta I was forcibly struck with the rocky nature of the soil. The rocky hills rose high above the water, and on alighting on shore my feet encountered the resistance of bare rock. I ascended the steps hewed out of the solid rock, by which means I reached the plateau, on which the greater part of the town is built. A promenade, which was also shaped out of the natural rock, led me to my hotel. I now became very desirous for a further study of the place. Mr. Inglott, at that time the chief medical officer of the hospitals in Malta, and Dr. Pisani, a distinguished Maltese physician, rendered me very efficient aid in my researches. They often wondered why I had determined to visit Malta. How often did they say to me, when I questioned them on the nature of the soil of this rocky island, "Our rock is not rock in your sense of the term, but it is a sponge which sucks up everything which falls upon it" I Investigation proved that the Maltese rock was as porous