3G6 PERU. [chap, xvi. 



is not always produced by a luxuriant vegetation with an ar- 

 dent climate : for many parts of Brazil, even where there are 

 marshes and a rank vegetation, are much more healthy than this 

 steiile coast of Peru. The densest forests in a temperate cli- 

 mate, as in Chiloe, do not seem in the slightest degree to aflect 

 the healthy condition of the atmosphere. 



The island of St. Jago, at the Cape de Verds, offers another 

 strongly-marked instance of a country, which any one would have 

 expected to find most healthy, being very much the contrary. 

 I have described the bare and open plains as supporting, during a 

 few weeks after the rainy season, a thin vegetation, which directly 

 withers away and dries up : at this period the air appears to be- 

 come quite poisonous ; both natives and foreigners often being 

 aifected with violent fevers. On the other hand, the Galapagos 

 Archipelago, in the Pacific, with a similar soil, and periodically 

 subject to the same process of vegetation, is perfectly healthy. 

 Humboldt has observed, that, " under the torrid zone, the 

 smallest marshes are the most dangerous, being surrounded, as at 

 Vera Cruz and Carthagena, with an arid and sandy soil, which 

 raises tlie temperature of the ambient air."* On the coast of 

 Peru, however, the temperature is not hot to any excessive de- 

 gree ; and perhaps inconsequence, the intermittent fevers are not 

 of the most malignant order. In all unhealtiiy countries the 

 greatest risk is run by sleeping on shore. Is this owing to the 

 state of the body during sleep, or to a greater abundance of 

 miasma at such times? It appears certain that those who stay 

 on board a vessel, though anchored at only a short distance from 

 the coast, generally sufi'er less than those actually on shore. On 

 the other hand, I have heard of one remarkable case where a 

 fever broke out amono: the crew of a man-of-war some hundred 

 miles off" the coast of Africa, and at the verv same time that one 

 of those fearful periods f of death commenced at Sierra Leone. 



No State in South America, since the declaration of indepen- 

 dence, has suffered more from anarchy than Peru. At the time 



* Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, vol. iv. p. 199. 



t A similar interesting case is recorded in the ^L'^dras Medical Quart. 

 Journ., 1839, p. 340. Dr. Ferguson, in his admirable Paper (see 9th vol. of 

 Ediiiburgli Royal Trans.), shows clearly that the poison is generated in the 

 drying process; and hence that dry hot countries are often the most un- 

 healthy. 



