18S ISLES OF SUMMER, 



instances from St. Domingo; and by tlie yellow fever at distant 

 intervals, and attended with very slight mortality, viz. : in 1829, 

 1845 and 1853, until lSGl-2, when from transient circumstances 

 it assumed a more malignant form, and carried off a greater num- 

 ber of victims, including the first bishop of the diocese. It re- 

 peated its visits in 1863-4. 



''The inhabitants are, for the most part, a hardy, robust race. 

 They consume little animal food, and live chiefly on Indian and 

 Guinea corn, vegetables, fish and shell-fish. Many of the petty 

 cultivators on the Windward Islands, who cling to their small 

 plots, and refuse to seek employments as hired laborers in their 

 own or other islands, are often reduced to much distress when 

 their meagre crops of corn fail them through drought or other 

 causes; and these are in the course of deterioration, both physi- 

 cal and mental, enervated, indifferent to improvement, and bring- 

 ing up their families in ignorance and sloth. 



"Nassau is usually very healthy and free from disease. In 

 18G2-64, during the height of the blockade-running trade, when 

 the town was filled with strangers, the lodging houses were over- 

 crowded, and the elements of disease were festering in the heart 

 of the city, it is not surprising that the yellow fever, whether 

 introduced by vessels coming from infected ports, or engendered 

 by the unusual condition of the city, should have broken out. 

 But it icas confined to strangers and to unacdlniated ^^ersons, 

 and was not by a"ny means fatal as compared with other places. 



" The Board of Health, a body constituted under a local Act, 

 with large powers for the protection of the health of the colony, 

 reported that in 18G1-G2, about 400 persons were attacked, and 

 ninety-five died, in a population numbering in 18G1, 11,503; and 

 that in 18G4, out of a population estimated at 15,000, the num- 

 ber of cases was TOO, and of deaths 137. Of these, 153 cases 

 resulting in forty-five deaths, were admitted into the Quarantine 

 Hos2)ital from the shipping and lodging houses.'' 



