380 
CAUSES OF FEBlilLE DISEASE. 
affirmed that they had imported the contagion, and that 
the disease had appeared on board a brig from Philadel- 
phia, even before the vessel had entered the roads of La 
Guayra. The captain of the brig denied the fact ; and as- 
serted that, far from having introduced the malady, his crew 
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 diametrically 
opposite one to another. The more enlightened inhabit- 
ants of Caracas and La Guayra, divided hi opinion, like 
the physicians of Europe ana the United States, on the 
question of the contagion of yellow fever, cited the instance 
of the American vessel; some for the purpose of proving 
that the typhus had come from abroad, and others, to show 
that it had taken birth in the country itself. Those who 
advocated the latter opinion, admitted that an extraordinary 
alteration had been caused in the constitution of the at- 
mosphere 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 ex- 
traordinary a manner, that it bore down trunks of trees 
and masses of rock of considerable size. During this flood 
the waters were from thirty to forty feet hi breadth, and 
from eight to ten feet deep. It was supposed that, issu- 
ing from some subterranean basin, formed by successive 
infiltrations, they had flowed into the recently cleared 
arable lands. Many houses were carried away by the tor- 
rent ; and the inundation became the more dangerous for 
the stores, in consequence of the gate of the town, which 
could alone afford an outlet to the waters, being accidentally 
closed. It was necessary to make a breach in the wail 
on the sea-sido. More than thirty persons perished, and 
the damage was computed at half a million of piastres. 
The stagnant water, which infected the stores, the cellars, 
and the dungeons of the public prison, no doubt diffused 
miasms in the air, which, as a predisposing cause, may 
have accelerated the development of the yellow fever ; but 
I believe that the inundation of the Rio de la Guayra was no 
move the primary cause, than the overflowings of the Gua- 
dalquivir, the Xenil, and the Gual-Medina, were at Seville, 
at Ecija, and at Malaga, the primary causes of the fatal epi- 
