i88 A N T I E N T M E T A P H Y S I C S. Book 11. 



the inner parts of the ifland, that are full of marflies, is loaded with 

 putrid vapours ; whereas the wind from the fea, though it brings a 

 great deal of rain, makes their healthieft weather. In that year, the 

 drought was remarkable ; fo that a great part of the marflies were 

 dried up ; the exhalations from which produced a fog that lafted for 

 fix weeks, and was fo thick that they could fee nothing that Vsras at 

 any diftance. It was fo pernicious, even to the vegetable life, that 

 it deftroyed every green thing about Bencoolen ; and, as to the ani- 

 mal life, great numbers of the natives died of it, and of our fado- 

 ry more than two thirds. It raged alfo among the buffalos and 

 horfes. But, what was moft extraordinary, and dirtinguifhes it 

 from all other plagues of which we read, is, that it deftroyed evea 

 the fifties of the fea, which were caft up upon the beech, dead, in 

 heaps. Whether it alfo affeded the wild animals of the iftand I 

 could not learn ; but I think it is highly probable that it did j though 

 we do not read of any plague affeding them, except the plague a- 

 mong the cattle in the Alps, which, if we may believe Virgil, de- 

 ftroyed even the animals in the natural ftate *. This account of the 

 plague in Sumatra I had from two gentlemen, one of whom was in 

 the ifland at the time, and the other, who is a phyfician by profef- 

 fion, had been there the year before, and returned to it the year 

 after, and wsfs there altogether twenty years, longer, I believe, 

 than any European ever lived there f . 



Thefe 



* See Pages 78. and 119. 



t This gentleman toJd me, that, one year he was there, a half of the Fadory died i 

 and, in one month, he faw a half of the garrifon buried. What prodigious numbers 

 of men does trade deflroy, and particularly thofe diftant fettlements, for carrying it 

 on in climates and countries fo adverfe to our temperament and conftitution, as A- 

 frica, the Eaft and Weft Indies ate, efpecially when thefe fettlements muft be pre* 

 te(^ed by a military force ? 



