RELATION OF MALARIA TO AGRICULTURE. 525 



twenty dollars an acre. Thousands of acres in this region are still 

 covered with the primeval forest, and the bears and deer still roam- 

 ing there offer splendid opportunities for the chase, as evidenced by the 

 late visit of our chief executive to those regions for the purpose of 

 hunting. Why is not this land thickly settled and why is it not 

 worth from two to five hundred dollars an acre? If it produces from 

 one to two or more bales of cotton on an acre, and it does, it ought to be 

 worth the above named figures. A bale of cotton to the acre can be 

 produced for thirteen dollars, leaving a net profit of twenty to forty 

 dollars for each bale or forty to eighty or more dollars for each acre 

 of land cultivated. Moreover, this land has been doing that for years 

 and will do it for years to come without the addition of one dollar's 

 worth of fertilizer. Land that will produce a net profit of forty to 

 eighty dollars an acre is a splendid investment at one, two or even three 

 hundred dollars an acre. Yet this land does not sell in the market 

 for anything like so much, because the demand is not sufficient, for 

 white people positively object to living in the 'Delta' on account of 

 malarial chills and fevers. A man said to me not long ago that he 

 would go to the ' Delta ' that day if he were sure that his own life or the 

 lives of the members of his family would not be shortened thereby. 

 There are thousands exactly like him, and the only reason that these 

 thousands do not go there to buy lands and make homes is on account 

 of chills and fevers. But there is a time coming, and that not far 

 distant, when malaria in the 'Delta' will not menace the would-be 

 inhabitants. When that time comes it will be the richest and most 

 populous region in the United States. 



There can be no doubt that many people are kept away from the 

 sunny southern skies because of the dangers of malaria, sometimes 

 fancied 'tis true, but quite as often real. It behooves us to remove 

 this danger entirely. 1 feel sure the day is soon coming when chills 

 and fevers will have lost their terrors because we shall surely learn 

 how to avoid them. It is most propitious that these wonderful dis- 

 coveries in regard to malaria and yellow fever were made on the eve 

 of the south 's great awakening along industrial and educational lines. 



If the experiments of Eoss, Manson, Celli, Sambon, Low and others 

 demonstrate that malaria can be avoided; and if the experiments of 

 Carroll, Eeed, Lazear and Agramonte demonstrate that quarantine and 

 fumigation are useless and that yellow fever can be controlled by 

 controlling mosquitoes or by keeping inside of a wire screen out of their 

 way, then I venture to predict that those experiments will go down in 

 the annals of the south as the most important of the nineteenth 

 century. 



