FOUNDER OF HIS RACE 127 



CHAPTER XVni. 



UNDER CAPTAIN DULANEY. 



Then one day the sun rose clear and bright, the waters 

 sank and the mountains showed clean-cut against the 

 fleckless sky — but no bees buzzed, no sweet odors filled 

 the air, no wild flowers carpeted the woods, no butter- 

 flies fluttered, no birds sang. 



Vermont tasted that year the bitter cup of desolation. 



A dire scourge of spotted fever, or "plague," the doc- 

 tors called it, broke out, severest in ]\Iontpelier. Con- 

 sternation was great among the Sabbath-abiding folk 

 who claimed solemnly that the affliction was due to the 

 worldly ways and ''flunk and flummux" of the "foreign- 

 ers" who came from other states to pass the summer in 

 the Green Mountains. Even the women of \^ermont, 

 themselves, had taken to wearing laces, ribbands, frills 

 and furbelows — most unbecoming in God-fearing fe- 

 males ! 



Stagnant water stood in pools, here and there, houses 

 were damp, there were no crops, and all food was mouldy 

 and unwholesome, for lack of sunshine. 



In Alontpelier men went from house to house, carrying 

 long bathing vessels, and such of the women as had not 

 yet been attacked with the '^plague" bathed the stricken 

 ones in an infusion of hemlock boughs. Doctors bled 

 them and dosed them with teas more or less harmful 

 made of ginseng, pleurisy-root and marshmallow. Fresh 

 air, sunshine and pure water with proper nourishment 



