Part 21

Lastly, it may be urged in opposition to the opinion that the contagion was communicated by the crew of the “Eclair,” that the small island on which the sick were landed and to which they were confined was a mile distant from the town of Porto Sal Rey, and that on reference to the map attached to Dr M‘William’s report, it is obvious that the North-east trade wind must (according to the theory of Sir William Pym, as applied to the Neutral Ground at Gibraltar in 1828) have dispersed the contagion if in existence, or carried it in a contrary direction from Porto Sal Rey.

* * * * *

For a more minute examination of the cases of the guards at the Fort, and of Pathi and others, as presented by Dr M‘William, we refer to the Note of Dr Browne, Appendix No. III. (p. 306), who has there shown the real value of these cases, considered as links forming a chain of circumstantial evidence.

Footnote 35:

Vide the Report itself.

The authentic facts attending the intercourse of the ship’s company with the inhabitants of the island, afford further evidence that no infection could have been communicated by the former to the latter. Thus, it is admitted that Captain Estcourt, the commander of the ship, went directly from the infected vessel to reside with Mr Macaulay, the judge: no infection was communicated to Mr Macaulay, or any part of his family.

The officers of the gun-room—midshipmen, warrant, and engineer—on disembarking from the ship, took a house for themselves and their servants in the town, and mixed unreservedly with the inhabitants: no infection was communicated to any individual with whom they had intercourse.

The crew obtained or took leave to pay frequent visits from the small island to the town of Porto Sal Rey, where, according to Dr M‘William, they resorted chiefly to the house of one Georgio, who kept a spirit store; the only consequence of which visit, considered by Dr M‘William a remarkable one, appears to have been that this man (and “shortly afterwards” two females who associated with them) was attacked with headache and general fever on the evening of the day he was visited by the “Eclair’s” people; a result which admits of a more obvious solution than the communication of febrile contagion on the part of persons who were themselves in perfect health.

The soiled linen of the officers and crew having been brought on shore on the first arrival of the vessel, was immediately given out to be washed to the washerwomen of Porto Sal Rey, and the careful search made after these women, brought to light no fewer than seventeen persons who were so employed.

“The soiled clothes,” says Dr King, “linen, cotton, and flannel, which had accumulated in the officers’ cabin from the time of their departure from Sierra Leone, were contained in at least 12 bags, which were taken on shore at Porto Sal Rey the same evening the ship arrived, and distributed next morning (22nd August) to the washerwomen of the town. Now, if the disease possesses the power of reproduction, its poison must [according to general opinion] have been as certainly communicated through the medium of fomites as by direct contact with the sick on board or at the fort; yet none of the washerwomen nor any in their families were attacked with fever until November, showing an interval of 70 days after exposure to the infection.”

That it was not from any want of susceptibility to the influence of febrile poison that these women escaped the danger of this exposure to fomites was proved by subsequent events; for during the progress of the epidemic, all of these women, according to Dr McWilliam, with only one exception, were attacked with the prevailing fever; two between six and seven weeks after the sailing of the “Eclair;” five, two months; two, three months; three, four months; and one, five months afterwards.

“None of the deaths,” says Dr M‘William, “took place until fever was general in Porto Sal Rey, so that in none of these cases can the occurrence of the fever be fairly attributed to infectious matter conveyed by the linen.”

The Guards at the Fort were many times relieved, and the soldiers were sent direct from the small island to their barracks in Porto Sal Rey, without conveying any disease to their comrades. On one occasion two soldiers who are stated to have lived in a room next to that in which the sick of the “Eclair” were lodged, on being taken ill, were conveyed at once to the barracks, yet they infected no one in their quarters.

From a list drawn up by Dr King, of the names of the islanders who were engaged as labourers on board the “Eclair,” it appears that there were in all 63 persons employed in coaling, watering, and cleansing the ship. These men appear to have had unrestricted communication with the ship’s crew. According to Dr M‘William, the whole of these labourers went to their respective homes every night, except those from Estacia and the Eastern villages, who generally slept at Porto Sal Rey. None of these men were themselves attacked with fever, excepting one (Pathi) whose case has been already considered; none of them communicated fever either to their own families or to the persons with whom they lodged in the town, yet subsequent events proved that they as well as the washerwomen were sufficiently susceptible subjects, since, during the progress of the epidemic, the greater part of them were attacked by the disease; none, however, within a month after the departure of the “Eclair;” a few within two months, but the majority not until four or five months afterwards.

That the geographical position of the Cape de Verd Islands places them within the legitimate domain of Yellow Fever, and that this disease is no stranger to these islands, is admitted on all hands. According to Dr M‘William,

“The north-western part of the island, where Porto Sal Rey is situated, is low and flat, and almost wholly occupied by sand, which, blown up from the north-western shore through the water-courses, and other hollows, accumulates in mounds twenty and thirty feet high, which are drawn about and shifted by any little variation of the direction of the wind.”

On the flat between Porto Sal Rey and the village of Rabil, which is about four miles to the southward of Porto Sal Rey, Dr M‘William states that there is a point where the sea, when the waves are high—

“Breaks over the elevated beach, and penetrates through the shingle, so as to accumulate, and run inland in the form of a narrow creek, from 200 to 300 yards from the sea-shore. During the rainy season, this, in common with the other flats on the island, is inundated to a considerable extent, as is evident from the appearance of the soil in those places not covered with sand, as well as by the presence of a rude raised causeway, which the people have constructed over part of the hollow flat, to render it passable during the rains. * * * Near the town is a hollow flat, spread over an area of about a mile, with the same soil and subsoil as that in the town. The central part of this area is occupied by a salt pan, which contains not less than 300 troughs, each a foot deep, and about thirty feet square, into which the salt water is poured, there to evaporate and form salt. During and for some weeks after the rainy season, the whole of this space is more or less inundated. * * * The water is left to stagnate on the Rabil side, and as it dries up during the hot weather, little alluvial islets are from time to time exposed, which the people avail themselves of to raise a small crop of corn. Indeed the greater part of the ravine, from Rabil downwards, is in a state of rude cultivation, and contains large green fœtid pools, with all kinds of decomposing matter, the effluvia from which was most offensive when I was there in May, 1846.”

Experience has shown, that such a condition of sandy soil is as fruitful a source of endemic and malignant fever as a marsh or swamp. Dr Lind, who wrote nearly a century ago, expressly notices the unhealthiness of Boa Vista, particularly during the rainy season, stating that, “strangers who arrive here at this season are liable to be visited by a general sickness,” and instances its white sand as a mark of an unhealthy locality. Dr Fergusson confirms the correctness of this indication of insalubrity.

“That sandy soils,” he says, “should, in malarious climates, prove as productive of aggravated remittent fever as the swamp, has never been sufficiently explained. Certain it is, however, that they do so, in a marked and prominent degree. The Alemtejo and Algarve of Portugal—regions, I may say, altogether of sand—are the most prolific of fever of any in the Peninsula.”

Another instance is found in the unhealthiness of Vera Cruz, which is spoken of by McCulloch in the following words:—

“It is said to be the original seat of the Yellow Fever.” [Bulama?] “The city is well built and the streets clean, but it is surrounded by sand-hills and ponds of stagnant water, which, within the tropics, are quite enough to generate disease. The inhabitants and those accustomed to the climate are not subject to this formidable disease; but all strangers, even those from the Havannah and the West India Islands are liable to the infection. No precautions can prevent its attack, and many have died at Xalapa, on the road to Mexico, who merely passed through this pestilential spot.”

Dr King states, that if ever endemic fever derives its origin from a vitiated and malarious state of the atmosphere, Boa Vista abounds with the elements for its production. Among these he enumerates swamps and pools of stagnant water, in the immediate vicinity of Porto Sal Rey, and over the whole district of Rabil; patches of rich alluvial soil near the other villages, the recognized sources of noxious exhalations; the wretched food of the lower classes, and still more, the polluted atmosphere which they breathe in their crowded and ill-ventilated abodes, and the general disregard of cleanliness in their houses and streets, “a combination of morbid causes,” he says, “which would produce malignant fevers in any part of the world.”

The relative position of Boa Vista to the African coast would further naturally lead to the expectation that it must be subject to diseases of the same character, and no one disputes that this is the case. The residents of the island, military, medical, and civil, concur in stating that endemic, bilious remittent fever, prevails there more or less every year; that there is no season in which it does not carry off several of the inhabitants, and that it often prevails epidemically.

“The testimony of the most intelligent men in the island,” says Dr King, “including Dr Almeida, Senor Baptista (the Consul’s agent), the Mayor of Rabil, the Judge of Fundas Figieras, and the Judge at Old Town, removes every doubt as to the fact that fever prevails to a certain extent, and carries off several of the inhabitants in the months of November and December every year; and this endemic fever, which recurs annually, and which Dr Almeida calls the bilious remittent, does not always present the same mild aspect and character; on the contrary, it is well known that in certain years the disease was epidemical, and in comparison with other seasons, very fatal.”

Dr M‘William records the fact, that such epidemic seasons occurred and proved unusually mortal in the years 1821–2, in 1827, and in 1833.

It is most material to a right understanding of this whole subject to observe, that a Yellow Fever Epidemic had broken out at this very time in an adjoining island, St Jago. It is stated by Dr Stewart, in his Report in the Admiralty Correspondence, that “in the adjoining island at Porto Praya, there was Yellow Fever whilst the ship was at Boa Vista.” Captain Simpson states that it recurred in the following year at Porto Praya; “is common there at times and quite endemic.”

That co-incident with the presence of the “Eclair” at Boa Vista one of these epidemic seasons was impending, was declared by the usual indications, which in warm climates precede and accompany such visitations. These premonitory signs on this occasion were a great fall of rain at an unaccustomed season; the consequent accumulation of large quantities of stagnant water in and about the towns and villages; the occurrence of extraordinary heat; the prevalence of light winds with frequent calms rendering the weather extremely sultry and oppressive; the appearance of sporadic cases of fever of more than common intensity; the almost simultaneous outbreak of pestilence amongst cattle and other domestic animals; and the visitation in greater numbers than common of destructive insects.