REASONS FOR LEAVING. 193 
sit upon the bed of the sick man, she believed carried the disease 
to his own home, for two of his daughters thereafter had the 
fever and died. He then abandoned his house upon East Hill 
street, within a block or block and a-half of our hotel, and moved 
with the remainder of his family to ‘‘ Thompson’s Folly,” where 
he was sure of the best kind of Bahama air, and a plenty of it, 
although he took the chance of being blown some day half across 
the Atlantic ocean by a hurricane. The disease was not pesti- 
lential but sporadic, and although it was near to, it did not enter 
the hotel. It was evidently a very undesirable fever to have, 
whether entitled to be called yellow or not. Two outof three of 
the resident physicians persistently denied that it was yellow 
fever, while the third one, who was in Nassau when the yellow 
fever prevailed at the time of our late American war, differed 
with them on this point. A gentleman on familiar terms with 
the prominent men of Nassau, informed us before we left, that 
it was not at first believed to be yellow fever, simply because it 
was confined to children, and especially to the children of natives, 
“but now,” said he, ‘‘ that it has attacked adult strangers, they 
admit it to be yellow fever.” These admissions were not publicly 
made or generally known. 
Our attention was occasionally attracted by consultations, pri- 
vate and mysterious, of persons who traveled in company. A 
growing and constantly increasing desire to speedily return to 
the land of the starry flag was discernable, and we learned, after 
a while, that the state-rooms in the Nassau steamers for their 
return trips had been secured for sometime in advance by certain © 
wise and thoughtful ones—among whom we, alas, were not 
numbered. There was no panic, but only a quiet and commend- 
‘able exhibition of prudence. So far as we could learn, no cases 
of fever had occurred at our hotel, and nothing was observed in 
its immediate vicinity calculated to generate or invite disease. 
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