190 ISLES OF SUMMER. 



and of *' being not only lazy, but addicted to the most vicious 

 and immoral habits/' Also, that upon Acklin's Island, '"'the 

 commonest comforts and the ordinary necessaries of life are evi- 

 dently wanting," which he attributes in part to the indolent 

 „ habits of the people. He says that upon Fortune Island, the 

 ifpoiAe (numbering 470) "are all poor and unable even to repair 

 their own dwellings, and that but for the fish, conchs and crabs, 

 they would absolutely suffer and perish from want of the com- 

 monest necessaries of life, for they are too indolent and inactive 

 jfitogo where their labor would be useful to themselves and others." 

 ^ We give these facts, not as fairly indicating the average char- 

 acter and condition of the people living upon the Bahama islands, 

 but as illustrating, 1st, that no air, however pure and delight- 

 fully tempered and medicated it may be in its normal condition, 

 will save a people from diseases of a malignant type when laws 

 of health are disregarded; and 2d, that very elaborate health 

 tables are of little value if they fail to discriminate between places 

 Avhere the sanitary conditions and habits of life of the people are 

 very unlike — although they have some degree of geographical 

 and political unity. 



We did not learn of any cases of yellow fever, cholera or small- 

 pox, from 1864 to 1879. In Gov. Robinson's report for 1878, he 

 states that "an epidemic of whooping cough prevailed for sev- 

 eral months, causing much distress and some mortality amongst 

 the children of the laboring classes." One would suppose that 

 in such a climate, if whooping cough made its appearance at all, 

 it would have been of a very mild type. It seems to have been 

 otherwise in 1878. 



During the Avinter and spring of 1880, a malignant fever re- 

 sulted in quite a number of deaths at Nassau, and it is our belief 

 that it was yellow fever, and we will state the evidence upon 

 which our opinion is predicated. 



