24 THEORIES 



smoking along, the wet exhaling by heat, as if we were 

 dissolving into vapor. Such weather in Africa, no hu- 

 man being could bear; but not so in Brazil; no one is 

 affected by those states of the atmosphere which are so 

 fatal elsewhere. It has, with some reason, therefore, 

 grown into a proverb, that it is a country where a phy- 

 sician cannot live, and yet where he never dies. There 

 was no doctor at S. Jose; but I was told there had been 

 two at S. Joao d'el Rey, and that one of them had left 

 because he could get no patients, and that the other had 

 for a long time, no patient but himself." {p. 297, vol. ii.) 



In Africa, under the same latitude, the rains scarcely 

 commence before the constitution begins to sink, even 

 without external exposure. According to Lind, the first 

 rains which fall in Guinea, are supposed to be the most 

 unhealthy ; and they have been known in forty-eight hours, 

 to render the leather of shoes quite mouldy and rotten. 

 Mungo Park observes, "that the rain had not commenced 

 three minutes, before many of the soldiers were affected 

 with vomiting, others fell asleep, and seemed as if intoxi- 

 cated. I felt a strong inclination to sleep during the 

 storm, and as soon as it was over, I fell asleep on the wet 

 ground, although I used every exertion to keep myself 

 awake. Twelve of the soldiers were ill next day.' 1 



"The thermometer," says Boyle, "is seldom above 81, 

 or below 69 at this period, but the process of decompo- 

 sition proceeds so rapidly, that cloth and animal sub- 

 stances, such as leather, become putrid in a period hardly 

 credible." 



On one of the Isles de Loss, at Sierra Leone, a small 

 force was soon destroyed, yet it is 'in the sea, only about 

 from half a mile to a mile in diameter, and formed of 

 granite, which rises to three hundred feet at its centre. 



