YELLOW FEVER IN SOUTHERN CITIES. 199 
place is quite small. The fever is supposed to have been caused 
by digging up the ground to make certain improvements which * 
the railroad’s freighting business demanded. 
The city of Fernandina in Florida, is pleasantly situated on a 
rise of ground upon Amelia Island. Its vicinity to the ocean, 
whose winds and the tides that flow through the spacious water- 
ways that lead to it, would seem to secure for it immunity from 
malignant diseases, although there are.low and wet savannahs in 
its immediate neighborhood. It is something of a health resort 
in winter. We learned while there, from some of its residents, 
that the yellow fever scourged the city in the summer of 1877. 
The magazine writer whom we have quoted, refers to it in’ his 
article, and says that in a population of 3000 there were 1000 
cases of yellow fever, which resulted in 100 deaths. He states 
that it was caused by opening ditches through wet lands in hot 
weather, and by the discharging of a large amount of ballast from 
a vessel with yellow fever on board, ‘‘ into the heart of the town, 
and in the midst of this reclaimed swamp;” and that, ‘‘ accord- 
ing to a well established law, the introduction of a quick, viru- 
lent disease will drive out or characterize all local diseases, and 
become epidemic.” 
Notwithstanding the grave and serious importance of the sub- 
ject, one can hardly refrain from smiling when he sees the in- 
habitants of a fever-stricken city looking toa hurricane for their 
deliverance, as travelers and pioneers upon the great western 
prairies sometimes fight fire with fire. Destructive cyclones have 
commissions of mercy and beneficence to execute, and God not 
only makes ‘‘the wrath of man,” but the angry winds ‘‘to praise 
him.” The blessed angel of health, when driven out of its 
strong-holds in the cities of the South, and upon the beautiful 
coral isles, harnesses itself to a hurricane and returns, driving 
out, scattering and destroying its enemy. | Incidentally huge 
