200 ISLES OF SUMMER. 
trees are torn up by the roots, houses blown down, and some lives 
« « destroyed, but health and happiness pitch their tents upon the 
ruins. Since the great hurricane of 1866, and until the year 
1880, the yellow fever, so far as we have been able to learn, 
though domiciled in Havana, has been a stranger in the Bahamas. 
We trust Nassau will for many years to come be free from its 
visitations. 
Although Nassau’s sanitary character has not always been un- 
sullied, and it has occasionally suffered a ‘‘fall from grace,” its 
reputation as a sanitarium has generally been not only good but 
well deserved. It never has been and never will be safe, espec- 
ially in countries where frosts are unknown, to violate the laws 
of health which nature has imposed. The operation of these 
laws, and the enforcement of their penalties, is as sure and silent 
as the revolutions of the stars. Disease and death sleeplessly 
watch from their coverts at the gates of every stronghold of 
health. Eternal vigilance is the price of safety. <A little 
slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep ” in the drowsy air, 
by the boards of health, has caused many happy homes to be 
made desolate in the past, as it will in the future, when hard but 
salutary lessons are forgotten. 
If Nassau, for six consecutive months out of every twelve, is 
not one of the healthiest places in the world, it is the fault of its 
people. From November to April, the seeds of malignant dis- 
eases will not germinate in its healing and healthful air, if wise 
sanitary regulations are made and enforced. She owes it to her- 
self, and to valetudinarians in the British American Provinces, 
and in the States of the Union, who desire to seek for health 
within her limits, to see to it that the pure air which nature 
wafts to her constantly from the ocean, and the pure distilled 
water from the clouds, artificially or naturally stored in its coral- 
line rocks, shall not be polluted and made inimical to health by 
a criminal neglect of the first and plainest hygienic principles, 
