Miscellaneous Facts and Observations. 135 



Island, where we found riding at anchor, 22 good 

 ships, with boats plying to and fro, with sails and 

 oars, which carried commodities from place to place: 

 so quick stirring, and numerous, as I have seen it 

 below the bridge at London. 



" Yet (he continues) notwithstanding all this ap- 

 pearance of trade, the Inhabitants of the Islands, and 

 shipping too, were so grievously visited with the 

 plague, (or as killing a disease,) that before a month 

 was expired, after our arrival, the living were hardly 

 able to bury the dead. Whether it were brought 

 thither in shipping : (for in long voyages, diseases 

 grow at sea, and take away many passengers, and 

 those diseases prove contagious,) or by the distem- 

 pers of the people of the Island : who by the ill dyet 

 they keep, and drinking strong waters, bring diseases 

 upon themselves, was not certainly known. But I 

 have this reason to believe the latter : because for one 

 woman that dyed, there were ten men ; and the men 

 were the greatest deboystes. 



" In this sad time, we arriv'd in this Island ; and 

 it was a doubt whether this disease, or famine threat- 

 ened most ; There being a general scarcity of Vic- 

 tuals throughout the whole Island." 



A true and exact History of the Island 

 of Barbadoes. p. 21. By Richard 

 Ligon, Gent. London: 1673. 



