Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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They Complained Only
Of The Oppressive Heat Which Prevailed During A Great Part Of The
Year.
If they exposed themselves to the immediate action of the
sun, they dreaded at most only those attacks of inflammation of the
skin or eyes, which are felt everywhere in the torrid zone, and are
often accompanied by a febrile affection and congestion in the
head.
Many individuals preferred the ardent but uniform climate of
La Guayra to the cool but extremely variable climate of Caracas;
and scarcely any mention was made of the insalubrity of the former
port.
Since the year 1797 everything has changed. Commerce being thrown
open to other vessels besides those of the mother country, seamen
born in colder parts of Europe than Spain, and consequently more
susceptible to the climate of the torrid zone, began to frequent La
Guayra. The yellow fever broke out. North Americans, seized with
the typhus, were received in the Spanish hospitals; and it was
affirmed that they had imported the contagion, and that the disease
had appeared on board a brig from Philadelphia, even before the
vessel had entered the roads of La Guayra. The captain of the brig
denied the fact; and asserted 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 inhabitants of
Caracas and La Guayra, divided in opinion, like the physicians of
Europe and 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
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
considerable size. During this flood the waters were from thirty to
forty feet in breadth, and from eight to ten feet deep. It was
supposed that, issuing from some subterranean basin, formed by
successive infiltrations, they had flowed into the recently cleared
arable lands. Many houses were carried away by the torrent; 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 wall on the sea-side. 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 more the primary
cause, than the overflowings of the Guadalquivir, the Xenil, and
the Gual-Medina, were at Seville, at Ecija, and at Malaga, the
primary causes of the fatal epidemics of 1800 and 1804. I examined
with attention the bed of the torrent of La Guayra; and found it to
consist merely of a barren soil, blocks of mica-slate, and gneiss,
containing pyrites detached from the Sierra de Avila, but nothing
that could have had any effect in deteriorating the purity of the
air.
Since the years 1797 and 1798, at which periods there prevailed
dreadful mortality at Philadelphia, St. Lucia, and St. Domingo, the
yellow fever has continued its ravages at La Guayra. It has proved
fatal not only to the troops newly arrived from Spain, but also to
those levied in parts remote from the coasts, in the llanos between
Calabozo and Uritucu, regions almost as hot as La Guayra, but
favourable to health. This latter fact would seem more surprising,
did we not know, that even the natives of Vera Cruz, who are not
attacked with typhus in their own town, sometimes sink under it
during the epidemics of the Havannah and the United States. As the
black vomit finds an insurmountable barrier at the Encero (four
hundred and seventy-six toises high), on the declivity of the
mountains of Mexico, in the direction of Xalapa, where oaks begin
to appear, and the climate begins to be cool and pleasant, so the
yellow fever scarcely ever passes beyond the ridge of mountains
which separates La Guayra from the valley of Caracas. This valley
has been exempt from the malady for a considerable time; for we
must not confound the vomito and the yellow fever with the
irregular and bilious fevers. The Cumbre and the Cerro do Avila
form a very useful rampart to the town of Caracas, the elevation of
which a little exceeds that of the Encero, but of which the mean
temperature is above that of Xalapa.
I have published in another work* (* Nouvelle Espagne tome 2.) the
observations made by M. Bonpland and myself on the locality of the
towns periodically subject to the visitation of yellow fever; and I
shall not hazard here any new conjectures on the changes observed
in the pathogenic constitution of particular localities. The more I
reflect on this subject, the more mysterious appears to me all that
relates to those gaseous emanations which we call so vaguely the
seeds of contagion, and which are supposed to be developed by a
corrupted air, destroyed by cold, conveyed from place to place in
garments, and attached to the walls of houses. How can we explain
why, for the space of eighteen years prior to 1794, there was not a
single instance of the vomito at Vera Cruz, though the concourse of
unacclimated Europeans and of Mexicans from the interior, was very
considerable; though sailors indulged in the same excesses with
which they are still reproached; and though the town was not so
clean as it has been since the year 1800?
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