TELLOTT FEVER IN SOUTHERN CITIES. 199 



place is quite small. The feyer is supposed to have been caused 

 by digging up the ground to make certain improvements which 

 • the railroad's freighting business demanded. 



The city of Fernandina in Florida, is pleasantly situated on a 

 rise of ground upon Amelia Island. Its vicinity to the ocean, 

 "whose winds and the tides that flow through the spacious water- 

 ways that lead to it, would seem to secure for it immunity from 

 malignant diseases, although there are low and wet savannahs in 

 its immediate neighborhood. It is something of a health resort 

 in winter. We learned while there, from some of its residents, 

 that the yellow fever scourged the city in the summer of 1877. 

 The magazine writer whom we have quoted, refers to it in his 

 article, and says that in a population of 3000 there were 1000 

 cases of yellow fever, whicli resulted in 100 deaths. He states 

 that it was caused by opening ditches through wet lands in hot 

 weather, and by the discharging of a large amount of ballast from 

 a vessel with yellow fever on board, " into the heart of the town, 

 and in the midst of this reclaimed swamp;" and that, "accord- 

 ing to a well established law, the introduction of a quick, viru- 

 lent disease will drive out or characterize all local diseases, and 

 become epidemic." 



Notwithstanding the grave and serious importance of the sub- 

 ject, one can hardly refrain from smiling when he sees the in- 

 habitants of a fever-stricken city looking to a hurricane for their 

 deliverance, as travelers and pioneers upon the great western 

 prairies sometimes fight fire with fire. Destructive cyclones have 

 commissions of mercy and beneficence to execute, and God not 

 only makes *'the wrath of man," but the angry winds ''to joraise 

 him." The blessed angel of health, when driven out of its 

 strong-holds in the cities of the South, and upon the beautiful 

 coral isles, harnesses itself to a hurricane and returns, drivins: 

 out, scattering and destroying its enemy. Incidentally huge 



