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THE

MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

No. 336.]

FEBRUARY 1, 1820. [1 of Vol. 49.

If any one enquire in regard to the public feelings which guide the Conductor of this Miscellany, he replies, that, in Politics, he is an immovable friend to the principles of civil liberty, and of a benevolent administration of government; and is of the party of the Tories, the Whigs, and the Radical Reformers, as far as they are friends to the same principles and practices;-that, in matters of Religion, he maintains perfect liberty of conscience, and is desirous of living in mutual charity with every sect of Chris tians; and that, in Philosophy, he prefers the useful to the speculative, constantly rejecting doctrines which have no better foundation than the authority of respected names, and admitting the assumption of no causes which are not equal and analogous to the effects.

ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS.

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Copy of an Address from the Town-Coun cil of Edinburgh to his Grace the Duke of Argyll.

Edinburgh; Nov. 26, 1760.

MY LORD DUKE,-This city has been honoured with the patronage of your family ever since any of us who are now in council came upon the stage: and all of us acknowledge it with warm gratitude. That, upon a great many important occasions, when we have applied to your Grace for your advice and countenance, you have given us both, in a manner which thoroughly convices us that you have the honour and prosperity of the city very much at heart. This encourages us in the near prospect we have of a new Parliament, to beg of your Grace to consider of it, and point out to us such a man to represent Edinburgh therein, as will approve himself zealous in promoting his Majesty's service, and the honour and the interest of his country at this critical juncture; and thereby enable himself the better to serve the city which he represents. And we beg leave, each of us, to assure your Grace, that the gentleman you recommend to us shall, in the ensuing election, not only have our own votes in his favour, which will carry his election, but our interest also with our brethren who happen not to be present with us while we are signing this, in order to MONTHLY MAG. No, 336.

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Copy of the Answer to the foregoing
Address.

MY LORD, I have received your letter, inclosing a very obliging offer from a very great number of the Town-Council of Edinburgh to follow my advice in the ensuing election. I beg your Lordship will be so good as to acquaint them

how sensible I am of the honour done
me, in asking my advice in the manner
they have done; but, it being a trust
which I dare not take upon myself to
execute alone, without consulting some
considerable persons here who are the
most capable to advise and serve the
city of Edinburgh, they may depend
on my taking no rash step in this affair,
but shall steadily pursue their interest,
as the chief object of my attention in
meriting, as far as I can, the confidence
now placed in me. I am, my lord,
Your Lordship's

Most obedient humble servant,
ARGYLE,

London;
December 16, 1760.

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note, is a fatigue in this climate; yet you expect that I am to report a special detail of every striking object in this part of the West Indies. I shall, nevertheless, make some attempts to gratify your curiosity.

The poco à poco is the motto of all who draw their first breath in these scorching climates, or who come to reside in them. But, to begin, it is unpleasant to announce that, since my arrival, for about a year, in this island, I have witnessed the successive extinction of about four-fifths of those who have arrived from Europe. A terrible disorder, the vomito negro, better known by the name of the yellowfever, almost invariably attacks the new. ly-landed. In vain do I enquire what is the cause of this disease, and what are the remedies provided against it. The physicians of the country are as uninformed on this subject as I am; as evidently appears from the very different prescriptions which they distribute, and which all tend to one common result,that of conducting their unhappy patients to the grave. At the same time, the negro women are much more successful in their treatment of the fatal fever than the regular faculty: they inspire confidence which calms the patient, and then, probably, Nature does the rest. The very captains who have brought away the negresses from the coast of Africa, are obliged to implore their benevolent assistance, and are frequently indebted for the preservation of their lives to those whom they have, by an abuse of civilization, deprived of their country and their liberty.

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It is terrible to reflect on the rapidity with which this disorder marks its pro Woe to the wretched victims gress. whose consciences are not at ease! have never been absent three or four days without having to witness, on my return, the death and interment of some individual of my acquaintance; or, at least, this has occurred to me twice. The first instance was in that of a young Frenchman named St. André, who was about to institute a course of chemical lectures.; and, as he had been three years inured to the climate, he was considered as well-seasoned: the second was that of a youth scarcely nineteen, son of Darte, a manufacturer of porcelain, a young man of excellent education, the amenity of whose manners and native modesty, had gained him many friends.

The Havannah is not the only seat of this terrible scourge: there is not a port

in the whole island that can be deemed an exemption. Out of a hundred Europeans who disembarked two months ago at Nuevitas, one-half have fallen victims. The rural districts are more salubrious; yet, even there, the vomito negro makes occasional ravages, though it appears with less violence and frequency.

The natives are not so exempt from the fever as is commonly imagined. If born in the Havannah, or the other ports, they are subject to a hard condition,that of never quitting them. Such as embark for America and Europe, and even such as go and reside in the country for a year or two, cannot return with out danger. I very lately was an eyewitness of the death of a girl not more than ten years of age, who was born in the Havannab, and brought up at a few miles distance from it, and who had inadvertently repaired thither, to be present at a family-feast.

You may fancy, perhaps, that the disease lies dormant for six months of the year, when the sun is more distant from this part of the torrid zone; but this is a mistaken notion, though pretty gencrally entertained. There is not a day in the year that does not extinguish its victims, though the number is less considerable in our winter and autumn, than in the spring and summer. It is now raging in all its force: the last fifteen days of April proved fatal to seventysix French; and the English, and all other Europeans, in the proportion of the numbers, sink under its influence. I am even now environed with the dying and the dead. If I stir out, I meet with hundreds of priests running and crossing themselves in all directions; some car. rying the viaticum, others chanting psalms or funeral dirges in the different paths leading to the cemeteries. If I remain within doors, twenty bells are constantly tolling, and strike my interior sense still more forcibly than the gloomy scene of which I am the spectator. It is an additional fact, though hardly credible, that even cupidity has its martyrs. A profitable speculation must not be abandoned, and each nation retains its characteristic traits: the Frenchman goes down to his grave with a merry song, and the Englishman dies sulky, though with bottle in hand.

For my part, I can neither sing nor drink, but fly for refuge to the country, where I mean to proceed with my epistle, unless visited by that obnoxious guest, the vomito negro.

Here

Here I am, then, reposing in the midst of a meagre scene, the soil covercd with volcanic reliques, and no sort of perspective but a few trees thinly scattered, with no umbrage, and but a pale verdure, which it would baffle the imagination of a Briton to conceive.

But I must now try to entertain you with matters less sombrous than the vomito negro. My crossing the seas took up sixty days; and, on arriving, my usual good-humour soured into phlegm, on beholding a country naked and parched, with not a flower or rivulet to be seen.

Before we entered the Havannah, we perceived on our left a fort named the Morro, under the cannon of which every vessel must pass. The eminence on which it stands, its actual display, and, more than all perhaps, the menacing aspect of the mouths of its cannon, impress a majestic and imposing character on its exterior. On approaching nearer to the entrance, I beheld on my right a few scattered country-houses, and in the back-ground a village called La Salud. This prospect was rather agreeable and pleasing.

In a few minutes we passed through the narrow channel which conducts into the harbour, and then we discovered on a sudden an immense basin of an oval form, regaling the eye with the spectacle of a thousand or twelve hundred flags of all nations. I think the superb Tyre could not have shewn a richer or more magnificent sea-piece. On the right, a thick wall conceals the city, and we could scarcely obtain a glimpse of a few steeples, whose clumsy construction would lead one to conceive that labourers, not architects, had been employed in the embellishments of the Havannah.

On the left of the basin appear a number of houses, that make part of a village called La Regla, and behind them is a little grove of trees, the only decoration of that immense basin. In vain we looked about for a rock with a frowning aspect, for a verdant hill or dale, or rows of houses rising in an amphitheatre over the shore.

This haven, which is the most capacious and secure in this part of the world, will in time become useless, unless attention is paid to it. The canal that leads to it is gradually getting narrower; it has only seventeen feet of water, though in 1743 it was four-andtwenty feet deep. The entrance too in 1743 was sixty feet deep, but now only eighteen. The evil is well known, and would be easy to find a remedy

for it; but that species of persevering firmness is the very thing wherein both the public functionaries and individuals here are deficient.

Before I quit the haven, I must not forget to mention the machine that has been constructed for providing vessels with masts; it is considered as very ingenious, and excites the admiration of foreign sailors. It was completed more than twenty years ago, after the designs of a Catalonian named Pedro Gatel; but both the honour and profit of the invention were engrossed by the governor and the commandant of the marine of that time. Both of them obtained promotion for it, while the inventor was not allowed even to raise his own machine. He died some time after in indigent circumstances and broken-hearted, and bis widow and children are languishing in poverty at this day, at the Havannab.

On landing, we saw before us a narrow archway, that leads to the Havannah. The intermediate space is not above ten steps. At every second step I felt myself sinking in mire; but I expected to find a good pavement on passing the gateway. No such thing. On the right, on the left, before you, it is all a mudhole; and through the whole range of streets there was no prospect of getting free from it, till we arrived at the house we were in search of.

The streets are not paved, and the waters have no descent; hence the surface remains in a state of nature. This constant stagnation of the water necessarily gives rise to pestilential miasmata, and renders the Havannah a sink of foul exhalations. As soon as we advanced a little into the city, we were assailed with an intolerable stench, which I could not get rid of, and my olfactory nerves seemed to be bewildered as much as they would have been among the drugs of twenty apothecaries' shops.

In going through the streets, I found them narrow, dirty, not laid out in straight lines, and inclosed with low houses, which have windows indeed, but without glass panes, and which are closed with wooden bars. The appearance of the people who perambulate the streets helped to aggravate the painful impressions which I felt; thousands of whites and negroes, most of them covered with rags and plasters, strike a stranger, on his first landing, with a kind of horror: he soon gets rid of all his previous illusions, and disappointment intercepts the gay hopes which he had an ticipated.

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In advancing thus far, I had to shield my face from swarms of musquitoes, that were annoying me with their stings; and to protect my ears against the rumbling of a score of bells, in eight or ten steeples. Sometimes it is for a dying person, sometimes for an interment; and, further off, it is a call to an office or ecclesiastical service.

we are walking not in a city, but in a vast infirmary.

On proceeding to my hotel, I could hardly believe it one. An immense hall, as large as a baru, and almost as unfurnished, is the common rendezvous; the sleeping-rooms are not much better than small closets, as naked as the hall. They enclose you within four walls, and the only furniture is a bedstead; in which you may stow yourself, rather to escape from seeing and hearing, than to enjoy sleep or comfortable repose. In vain did I, on the first night, implore the aid of Morpheus. A hard thin mattress, which I got only by entreating for it, communicates an uncasy burning heat. Nor indeed could I doze; for the plaintive cries of a sick person from an adjacent closet cast a gloom over me, which I could not overcome.

It was my lot to experience all this the first night of my arrival. No sooner had I risen, than I made enquiries about the sick person whose groans I had heard in the cell next to mine. They told me he was gone out, and I drew a good omen from this; but learned in the course of the day, that he was truly gone out, but it was to his last home; for, very early in the morning, he had been removed for interment.

Thus, dear sir, I present you with a faithful recital of my first day's incidents. Three parts out of four of those who come here are speedily surfeited, and reimbark immediately; and I have observed, that the military gentlemen are the first to make their escape.

Here are no external objects to amuse, no buildings to invite, a spectator; the public places narrow and inelegant, the houses low, as if erected in the infancy of the art. But what astonishes me is, that in so hot a climate there is no public garden,-not a tree to be seen, to afford a little refreshing shade. In a word, the Havannah, in its totality and in its details, seems to have been built for such a population as it contains. Extreme misery in Europe exhibits nothing half so hideous as the black tawny figures which here encumber the public ways; that part of the body which is not covered by filthy rags, lets appear plasters, cataplasms, and vesicatories;

Persons in easy circumstances seldom stir out, or, if they do, you scarcely ever meet them on foot. As to the women, whether rich or not, provided they are whites, custom, that inflexible tyrant, forbids them the use of their legs, and they can only appear abroad in gigs or chariots, so concealed with cloth curtains, that even the professed gallant can scarcely steal a glimpse of them.

Things look some little better in the interior of the houses. The principal place, which is on a level with the street, is in a manner all light, as the door and the windows are almost always open. Nor can you well designate a proper appellation for this principal place; for here, jumbled together, we find the voiture, the toilette, and the bed, so that it is a coach-house, a saloon, and a bedchamber, all in oue. Though it stands open to the street, all the household work is going on, and the women will dress and undress there as quietly as if no profane eye could overlook them. In London or Paris, such a procedure would soon collect a mob, but here it is scarcely even noticed. Are morals purer in Europe? This I will not determine; but, assuredly, they are more decent.

As the day begins to decline, you sally out, to console yourself, in some circles, for the languor of the forenoon; you introduce yourself to such as you have commenced acquaintance with, or to whom you are recommended. There you survey the master and family sunk in a dismal solitude. You think, perhaps, you are come too soon; an hour or two passes without a single strange face to greet, or any to break in upon the tedious dryness of the conversation. To hold a discourse requires an effort in this country; it throws you into a perspiration.

All the saloons here are uncommonly large. In some of these you will find elegant furniture of European manufacture, but their rooms look naked enough, as it would require an upholsterer's shop to supply the requisite decorations. Furniture here is attacked by three destructive foes,-the insects, heat, and moisture. A new provision must be made every two or three years; but rather than incur an expense so enormous, the inhabitants prefer stowing their piastres and ounces of gold in their coffers, where the sight of them, to minds uncultivated, yields more plea

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