554 JAMAICA, 



thought. It is daily taken to a degree of excefs by feme, who, in- 

 ftead of being injured by it, live in a found and perfeft flate of health. 

 It is a mild and fweet fait, which is far from being unfriendly to the 

 mixture of the fluids, becaufe it corrects acid, bilious humours, and ren- 

 ders the body foluble. 



Every teftimony, in fliort, agrees in pronouncing it to be one of 

 the beft adapted prefervatives of health in cold as well as hot climates, 

 from its nutritious, healing, and antifeptic qualities. Thofe who re- 

 jeft punch, from an opinion that lime or lemon-juice is offenfive to their 

 bowels, which often is the cafe in gouty habits, would do well to mix 

 fugar and fyrup with their rum and water ; at the iame time being 

 very moderate in the ufe of that fpirit ; they may be aflured, that 

 fuch a beverage will be far wholefomer for them than the liquor called 

 grog, which is a mixture of rum and water only ; for, ahhough rum 

 is far preferable to any other iimple diflilled fpirit, yet it may be ad- 

 vifcable in the Weft Indies to mix it with fome fermentative ingredi^ 

 ent ; and none is more proper than fugar or melafles. 



For the fjuie reafons on which the caufe of the plague's decreafe in 

 many parts of Europe has been fuppofed, it may be juftly concluded, 

 that putrid and malignant fevers neither originate fo frequently, nor 

 (when brought by infedion) ravage fo extcnlively in the Weft Indies 

 now as formerly they did. A proof of thisdecleniion is not only the 

 eomcarative healthinefs of Jamaica, formerly deemed a fickly ifland, 

 but the greater health of the feamen employed in this trade, who ftill 

 drink as hard, and expofe themfelves to all extremities of the cli- 

 mate as much, as they did one hundred years ago. Yet the mer- 

 chant fliips feldom lois any of their crew by thele diftempers, and 

 moft of them lofe none. Some will attribute this to the more ex- 

 teniive cultivation of the country, the cutting down its thick woods 

 in feveral parts, and melioration of its- atmofphere ; but there is fu- 

 peradded to all this the much greater quantity of fugar manufactured 

 throughout the ifland, and the greater facility which the feamen have 

 found in getting at fupplies of it for their private ufe, whilft they wait 

 in port the loading of their fl:iip, as well as during the voyage home ; 

 for, when, they cannot procure it gratis, they either buy of the Ne- 

 groes for a little tobacco, or other trifling confideration, or get it by 

 ihtft. There is now near fixty times as much fugar made in the 



ifland,. 



