BEASONS FOR LEAVING. 193 



sit upon the bed of the sick man, she believed carried the disease 

 to his own home, for two of his daughters thereafter had the 

 fever and died. He then abandoned his house upon East Hill 

 street, within a block or block and a-half of our hotel, and moved 

 with the remainder of his family to ''Thompson's Folly," where 

 he was sure of the best kind of Bahama air, and a plenty of it, 

 although he took the chance of being blown some day half across 

 the Atlantic ocean by a hurricane. Tlie disease was not pesti- 

 lential but sporadic, and although it was near to, it did not enter 

 the hotel. It was evidently a very undesirable fever to have, 

 whether entitled to be called yellow or not. Two out of three of 

 the resident physicians persistently denied that it was yellow 

 fever, while the third one, who was in Nassau when the yellow 

 fever prevailed at the time of our late American war, differed 

 with them on this point. A gentleman on familiar terms with 

 the prominent men of Nassau, informed us before we left, that 

 it was not at first believed to be 3'ellow fever, simply because it 

 was confined to children, and especially to the children of natives, 

 **but now," said he, "that it has attacked adult strangers, they 

 admit it to be yellow fever. " These admissions were not publicly 

 made or generally known. 



Our attention was occasionally attracted by consultations, pri- 

 vate and mysterious, of persons who traveled in company. A 

 growing and constantly increasing desire to speedily return to 

 the land of the starry flag was discernable, and we learned, after 

 a while, that the state-rooms in the Nassau steamers for their 

 return trips had been secured for sometime in advance by certain 

 wise and thoughtful ones — among whom we, alas, were not 

 numbered. There was no panic, but only a quiet and commend- 

 able exhibition of prudence. So far as we could learn, no cases 

 of fever had occurred at our hotel, and nothing was observed in 

 its immediate vicinity calculated to generate or invite disease. 



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