Page:Travels in Uruguay.pdf/58

TRAVELS IN URUGUAY. 43 who had been there told me that flocks of sheep had been offered him at fourpence per head, so great was the terror that had seized the people living there. A total, with those that died in the city, of 70,000 deaths was reported; though the exact number can never be known.

In Monte Video, where upwards of 4000 died, the heat was very great, and the doctors were called up at night many times to attend persons who were seized with cholera and were dying in every direction. You could see every morning placed at the corners of the streets the clothes of persons who had died in the night, which, having been set on fire, were still smouldering, in lots of three or four, scattered about. Tar barrels were burnt in every street by night, to dissipate the infection. There seemed to be with the natives an extreme reluctance to take the remedies that were prescribed; and by a strange infatuation they prevented medicines being administered to their dying relatives. And this was independent of the great unwillingness to take any means of cure that is so peculiar to persons that are seized with cholera. No vegetables or fruit were permitted to be sold in the market; and no fish was eaten, as it was supposed to have fed on the floating carcases of those that had died of the cholera. I heard afterwards of an Englishman in the camp having been asked to take out of a poesta, or shepherd's hut, the corpse of a person who had died from this complaint, because the natives themselves were afraid to touch the body. They offered him "an ounce" to do this-about £3. 2s. He accordingly got upon his horse, opened the door of the house, and threw in his lasso round the neck of the dead man in bed. The horse