188 ng ISLES OF SUMMER. 
instances from St. Domingo; and by the yellow fever at distant 
intervals, and attended with very slight mortality, viz.: in 1829, 
1845 and 1853, until 1861-2, when from transient circumstances 
it assumed a more malignant form, and carried off a greater num- 
ber of victims, including the first bishop of the diocese. It re- 
peated its visits in 1863-4. 
“«The inhabitants are, for the most part, a hardy, robust race. 
They consume little animal food, and live chiefly on Indian and 
Guinea corn, vegetables, fish and shell-fish. Many of the petty 
cultivators on the Windward Islands, who cling to their small 
plots, and refuse to seek employments as hired laborers in their 
own or other islands, are often reduced to much distress when 
their meagre crops of corn fail them through drought or other 
causes; and these are in the course of deterioration, both physi- 
cal and mental, enervated, indifferent to improvement, and bring- 
ing up their families in ignorance and sloth. 
‘Nassau is usually very healthy and free from disease. In 
1862-64, during the height of the blockade-running trade, when 
the town was filled with strangers, the lodging houses were over- 
crowded, and the elements of disease were festering in the heart 
of the city, it is not surprising that the yellow fever, whether 
introduced by vessels coming from infected ports, or engendered 
by the unusual condition of the city, should have broken out. 
But it was confined to strangers and to unacclimated persons, 
and was not by any means fatal as compared with other places. 
“The Board of Health, a body constituted under a local Act, 
with large powers for the protection of the health of the colony, 
reported that in 1861-62, about 400 persons were attacked, and 
ninety-five died, in a population numbering in 1861, 11,503; and 
that in 1864, out of a population estimated at 15,000, the num- 
ber of cases was 700, and of deaths 137. Of these, 153 cases 
resulting in forty-five deaths, were admitted into the Quarantine 
Hospital from the shipping and lodging houses,” : 
