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Several vessels also arrived before I left the Colony with invalids on board, but the deaths that took place in their number, certainly ought not to be introduced into the argument against the insalubrity of the island.
But this must not be too readily credited; for the degree of insalubrity attending situations in that climate is known so frequently to alter, from inscrutable causes, that a person who has resided only two or three years on a spot cannot pretend to form a judgment; and the natives, from a natural partiality, are always ready to extol the healthiness, as well as other imputed advantages, of their native places.
Nay, statesmen and scholars had been deluded into the belief that a country which, as they might have read in books so common as those of Hakluyt and Purchas, was noted even among tropical countries for its insalubrity, and had been abandoned by the Spaniards solely on account of its insalubrity, was a Montpelier.
In my own case, I was not only free from any apprehensions concerning fevers and those diseases which are incidental to a tropical climate, but, having been recommended to try the effects of a warm region, I anticipated an improvement in my general health from a short residence at a spot, which incautious modes of living, in addition to the insalubrity of the climate, have rendered fatal to so many of my countrymen.
That your memorialists have been credibly informed by letters received from individuals among them, and by the statements of such as have returned, that great distress has, from their first arrival there, existed among them, and does exist without mitigation, in consequence of the insalubrity of the climate; that twenty persons of the sixty-two Senecas were already dead some six weeks since, and about the same proportion of our friends of the other tribes; that many others were sick; that three of the leading Seneca chiefs, one of the Onondagas, one of the Oneidas, and a leading man of the Tuscaroras, were dead; that the remnant of the people, with very few exceptions, were very anxious to return, but were destitute of the means of doing so; that many of them have sent earnest requests to us for assistance to enable them to do so; but that only a few families among us are able to furnish efficient relief to their suffering friends.
The North River is entirely healthy, for it lies much higher up than the South River, that is further to the north, and although it is nearer the sea than where they live in Maryland and on the South River, it is nevertheless more wholesome, which shows that it is not the air of the sea which causes the insalubrity, but other reasons which I will not consider at present.
The march of Sir Sam Browne's force from the breezy upland of Gundamuk down the passes to Peshawur, made as it was in the fierce heat of midsummer through a region of bad name for insalubrity, and pervaded also by virulent cholera, was a ghastly journey.
The opinion of every body, Arabs, Tripolines, and Ritchie, and Lyon, their predecessors, were all unanimous as to the insalubrity of the air. Every one belonging to the present expedition had been seriously disordered, and amongst the inhabitants themselves, any thing like a healthy-looking person was a rarity.
The only shelter for them and their store was that afforded by half a dozen diminutive native huts; the island itself was a mere artificial formation, which being always becalmed by the high land of the Cape, was extremely unhealthy; it was also entirely destitute both of fresh water and firewood which circumstances, added to the insalubrity of the air, and the closeness of their dwellings, soon produced a sensible effect upon the health of the settlers.
The causes of the insalubrity of the atmosphere must be sought in the shores that extend to the east, as far as the eye can reach, towards the Punta de Tucasos, near the fine port of Chichiribiche. There are situated the salt-works; and there, at the beginning of the rainy season, tertian fevers prevail, and easily degenerate into asthenic fevers.
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