BILIOUS ano INTERMITTING FEVERS. 207 
cutting down the wood which formerly grew in its neigh- 
bourhood. I remember the time, when intermittents 
were known only within half a mile, in fome places, of 
that river. They are now to be met with ten miles from 
it in the fame parts of the ftate. 
I beg a diftinétion to be made here between clearing and 
cultivating a country. While clearing a country makes 
it fickly in the manner that has been mentioned, cu/tivat- 
ing a country, that is, draining {wamps, deftroying weeds, 
burning brufh, and exhaling the unwholfome or fuperflu- 
ous moifture of the earth, by means of frequent crops of 
grain, graffles, and vegetables of all kinds, render it heal- 
‘thy. Icould mention, in fupport of thefe facts, feveral 
countries in the United States, which have pafled through 
each of the ftages that have been defcribed. The firft fet- 
tlers received thefe countries from the hands of nature pure 
and healthy*. Fevers foon followed their improvements, 
nor were they finally banifhed, until the higher degrees of 
cultivation that have been named took place. I confine 
myfelf to thofe countries only where the falutary effects of 
cultivation were not rendered abortive by the neighbour- 
hood of mill-ponds. 
- A 3d caufe of the late increafe of bilious and intermit- 
ting fevers, muft be fought for in the different and une- 
qual quantities of rain which have fallen within thefe laft 
feven years. While our creeks and rivers, from the uni- 
formity of our feafons, were confined to fteady bounds, 
there was little or no exhalation of febrile miafmata from 
their fhores. But the dry fummers of 1780, 1781, and 
1782, by reducing our creeks and rivers far below their 
ancient marks; while the wet fprings of 1784 and 1785, 
by {welling them both beyond their natural heights, have, 
when they have fallen, as in the former cafe, left a large 
Dd2 and 
* A phyfician whe travelled through part of Bedford county, in Pennfylvania, in the year 
1732, informed me that he was witnefs of fome country people having travelled twenty miles, 
to fee whether it was poffible for a German girl who laboured under an intermittent, to he 
nor and corp at the fame time, 
