"VERA CRUZ. 



221 



hardly be called — abreast of the celebrated castle of 

 San Juan de Ulua, and within full view of the sea wall, 

 and the numerous towers, cupolas, and the batteries of 

 the city. Low shores and banks lay on either hand, and 

 the Island of Sacrilicios just broke the watery horizon 

 to the east. 



After reading the above, you will not expect me to 

 say much in description of La Villa liica della Vera 

 Cruz. 



Regularly and even beautifully built, with fine open 

 streets, a noble spacious square, and many churches — 

 the principal channel through which the riches of New 

 Spain are poured into the Old World — Vera Cruz is 

 deserted in its appearance, and forbidding, from the ut- 

 terly steril character of the shore on which it is based, 

 and the flights of unclean birds which perch upon its 

 roofs and churches, and hover round its walls. Mam- 

 mon is the sole god of the city which is called after the 

 symbol of our faith ; and here the boties of thousands 

 of his worshippers whiten in the sands. The popula- 

 tion has dwindled down from sixteen thousand to five 

 thousand souls ; and every year, a large proportion of 

 the new inhabitants, or the foreign arrivals, whether 

 from the cool table land above or from beyond sea, are 

 carried off by that terrible malady the " black vomit." 



The season when the vomito displays its greatest 

 virulence is commonly from August to October. This 

 year, it had never ceased to carry off* newcomers, even 

 during the cool months following the preceding rainy 

 season, and already in January it had made consider- 

 able ravages At the time we thus came within its 

 power, forty deaths a day were reported, and it was 

 supposed many more actually occurred. 



The intense heats of the climate, augmented by the 

 high walls of the city, and the rise of the sand hills — 

 together with the stagnant waters in the neighbouring 

 lagoons — are supposed to be the nurses of this terribly 

 malignant and subtile form of bilious fever, to which 

 experience has proved that the unacclimated is ex- 

 posed, though he breathe the infected atmosphere but a 



