392 



Americans, seized with the typhus, were re- 

 ceived in the Spanish hospitals ; and it was 

 affirmed, that they had imported the contagion, 

 and that, before they entered the road, the 

 disease had appeared on board a brig, which 

 came from Philadelphia. The captain of the 

 brig denied the fact ; and asserted, that, far 

 from having introduced this malady, his sai- 

 lors had caught it in the port. We know from 

 what happened at Cadiz in 1800, how difficult 

 it is to elucidate facts, when their uncertainty 

 serves to favour theories, that are diametrically 

 opposite. The more enlightened inhabitants 

 of Caraccas and La Guayra, divided in opinion, 

 like the physicians in Europe and the United 

 States, on the principle of contagion of the yel- 

 low fever, cited the instance of the same Ame- 

 rican vessel to prove, some, that the typhus 

 came from abroad, and others, that it took birth 

 in the country itself, Those who embraced 

 the latter system admitted, that an extraordi- 

 nary alteration had been caused in the consti- 

 tution of the atmosphere by the overflowings 

 of the Rio de La Guayra. This torrent, which 

 in general is not ten inches deep, was swelled 

 after sixty hours rain in the mountains, in so 

 extraordinary a manner, that it bore down trunks 

 of trees, and masses of rock of a considerable 

 size. During this augmentation, the waters 

 were from thirty to forty feet in breadth, and 



