182 ISLES OF SUMMES. 



Victoria Hotel, they would be miicli more damaging to the place 

 as a health resort. Wells and cisterns, in the absence of sand, 

 are sunk in the soft, porous, limestone rock, in the vicinity of 

 cessjoools and privy vaults, so that the water they contain can 

 hardly fail to become more or less unwholesome. In many wells 

 the water is said to rise and fall with the tide, but whether its 

 quality is impaired by sea water we are not informed. There 

 being no general sewerage system, the surface rock is likely to 

 become saturated with the waste and effete matter that is suffered 

 to accumulate around human habitations where the climate dis- 

 inclines to exertion, and exhalations may be expected to arise 

 therefrom, which will jeopardise health and life. 



The colored people who are crowded together in the suburbs 

 of Xassau, pay little, if any regard to nature's sanitary laws, and 

 apparently conform to few of the conditions of healthy human 

 existence. While they live in the open air during the day, they 

 at night are crowded together in the one or two rooms of their 

 little cabins, from which the outside air is religiously excluded 

 by closed doors and wooden shutters. Perhaps they have learned 

 by exper];fenoe the necessity of thus excluding the damp and 

 poisoned air that rests upon the low, Avct lands of the interior of 

 this island. Their poverty denies to them the advantages of a 

 generous diet of varied food which is everywhere within the reach 

 ^f honest labor in the States. 



That the seeds of disease, at least during the night, float in 

 the air above the swamps and lagoons of the central jDortions of 

 the island of New Providence, is apparent to any thoughtful ob- 

 server who either crosses it or sees it from any of the neighboring 

 hills. The germs of sickness existing there are never destroyed 

 or rendered torpid by frost. In the mild, soft, damp air, disease 

 is present, and often dispenses his fevers with a liberal hand, as 

 the official records and statistics clearly demonstrate. Consump- 



