Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v1.djvu/375

 healthy city desolated by two terrible epidemics. The yellow fever, which visited the place the previous year (1850) for the first time since the discovery of the country, still lingered, after having carried off nearly 5 per cent. of the population. The number of persons who were attacked, namely, three-fourths of the entire population, showed how general is the onslaught of an epidemic on its first appearance in a place. At the heels of this plague came the smallpox. The yellow fever had fallen most severely on the whites and mamelucos, the negroes wholly escaping; but the smallpox attacked more especially the Indians, negroes, and people of mixed colour, sparing the whites almost entirely, and taking off about a twentieth part of the population in the course of the four months of its stay. I heard many strange accounts of the yellow fever. I believe Pará was the second port in Brazil attacked by it. The news of its ravages in Bahia, where the epidemic first appeared, arrived some few days before the disease broke out. The government took all the sanitary precautions that could be thought of; amongst the rest was the singular one of firing cannon at the street corners, to purify the air. Mr. Norris, the American consul, told me, the first cases of fever occurred near the port, and that it spread rapidly and regularly from house to house, along the streets which run from the waterside to the suburbs, taking about twenty-four hours to reach the end. Some persons related that for several successive evenings before the fever broke out the atmosphere was thick, and that a body of murky vapour accompanied by a strong stench, travelled from street to