176 



PRECAUTIONS. 



and a comfortable living may be made ont of it by a yery 

 small amount of labor. When I consider the hardships 

 of settlers in your new states, with the cold, frost, snow 

 and damp they must encounter, and ice-bound during 

 many months of the year, I wonder very much that all 

 who are not of the most robust frames of body, do not 

 prefer our levels to settle on. 



There is an old prejudice against our climate. It arose 

 not amongst the first settlers, who praised it for its delight- 

 some salubrity, but amongst those who followed them T a 

 reckless, dissipated, over-wrought race, who cherished habits 

 which the least reflection would have forbidden, and which 

 in these days have almost wholly disappeared. There is a 

 great deal of immorality always incident to slave coun- 

 tries. We are here, doubtless, subject to disease : to fevers 

 particularly, but of the most manageable kind, generally. 

 Your fevers are much worse, and your liability to colds and 

 inflammatory attacks very much more I believe, endanger 

 life than our fevers would. To the timid visitors, I would 

 safely say, that there is no risk to life in spending a winter 

 here, so great as the risk attendant on a winter residence 

 in America. I think there is much less, and in numerous, 

 very numerous instances, life is saved and greatly prolonged 

 to a large class of individuals by residence here. 



To invalids it will be a recommendation that we have 

 abundance of medical men, of the highest qualifications 

 that British training can confer : men of true science, great 

 experience, and unfailing assiduitv. You cannot in Kew 

 York command higher skill I hardly believe. I am un- 

 willing to extend this letter, already too long, except to say 



