121 
and vices; in particular, the pernicious habit of dirt-eating. 
I believe I am not far from the truth in my calculation, 
when I say, that in this Spanish district, nine negroes out of 
ten will be found addicted to this singular and eventually 
fatal practice. 
As for the unhealthiness of the district, in respect to its 
white inhabitants, it is only during years. when the rainy 
seasons are heavy, and the north-easterly winds very pre- 
valent, that it deserves this character. Since the fatal year 
of 1823, few parishes in the Island have been more healthy. 
From that period, an improvement has taken place in the 
habits of the occupiers of the district, which, previously, 
were intemperate to an excess. I have ventured on these 
few remarks, having frequently heard this district named as 
peculiarly exposed to the influence of Malaria; an agent, as 
has been already observed, whose existence is, at best, but 
conjectural, and whose repeated effects I have always, as 
yet, been able satisfactorily to account for, by the action of 
more obvious causes. i 
* I envy not the man,” says a certain fanciful writer, * who 
can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and say there is naught."— 
Tenvy not the man who can say there is nothing to admire or 
instruct, though he should journey in the most desert 
region: of the earth; whose only inhabitapts are those of the 
wild, with the trace of no hand to be detected on its fair face, 
save that of Nature—with no art, save her's, displayed in the : 
uprearing of the green forests, and in the blending and vary+ 
ing of the many-hued flowers—and no voice uttered, save 
her's, from the shining and everflowing streams, and in the- 
sighing winds. It is for the Naturalist to find charms and 
attractions, subjects for musing and contemplation, in the 
most ordinary scenes, and in objects of every-day — 
in the path whereon he treads, on the hills with which he is 
encompassed, and in the atmospheric changes of the spacious 
canopy of heaven, spread over all. ! eae = 
Eden E jid citat © James MACFADYEN. 
Hope House, St. ANDREW'S, \ 
i aod July, 1830. 
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