OF GIBRALTAR. 33 



I have not the least doubt that improvements in 

 cleaning the sewers, &c., will be followed by a better 

 state of health of the garrison. Long will the boon 

 conferred upon the inhabitants by the late General 

 Don be remembered. The improvements effected 

 under his orders were made after the last epidemic 

 of yellow fever in 1828. To these succeeded those 

 of Sir Alexander Woodford, to whom Gibraltar is 

 much indebted for various benefits conferred upon it. 

 This fever has not since appeared in an epidemic 

 form, and it is to be hoped Gibraltar will in future 

 be spared so fearful a visitation. 



The general reader may not, perhaps, be aware 

 that the yellow fever, the great scourge of the West 

 Indies and the western coast of Africa, was alike 

 fatal in its effects in Gibraltar and in other parts of 

 Spain, in several visits it made there, though it 

 cannot be considered an endemic disease of the coun- 

 try. This fever, under various names, has no doubt 

 prevailed in Gibraltar, previous to the first detailed 

 account we have of it, but perhaps not to the same 

 extent as it did in 1804. In that year the yellow 

 fever made its appearance in August, and disappeared 

 about the beginning of January the following year. 

 During this dreadful epidemic there died, fifty-four 

 officers, eight hundred and sixty-four soldiers, one 

 hundred and sixty-four soldiers' wives and children, 

 and four thousand eight hundred and sixty-four of 

 the civil population. On the whole, more than one- 

 third of the troops and civilians who were attacked, 

 died. In 1810 the disease again made its appear- 



D 



