The Sun.
London, England, 1846-06-11 00:00:00

THE ECLAIR STEAM-VESSEL.

The following extract from the official correspondence
on the subject of the Eclair, and the epidemy which
broke out in the said vessel, recently presented to Par-
liament, will serve to throw some further light on the
subject.
Tare dispatch of Sir W. Pym and Mr. Arnott to Mr.
Greville (No. 5), dated " Whitehall, October 3, 1845,"
shows that four days after sailing from Sierra Leone one
man died with fever and black vomit, the first case of the
kind which had occurred ; and that during the voyage
18 were attacked by the same malady tlever and black
vomit), of whom 13 died. At Bona Vista the disease
continued to spread rapidly amongst the crew, when
it was determined to land all the crew (sick and
well), and to purity the vessel. For this purpose
every means was adopted to extirpate the infection by
washing and whitewashing, fumigation, &c. ; all the
Kroomen remaining on board except six. '.l he disease.
however, continued to prevail amongst the officers and
men on shore, thirty-one having died between August 21
and September 13. Under these circumstances, a con-
sultation was held by three naval surgeons, when it was
recommended and resolved that the steamer and crew
should proceed to England.
The crew were consequently re-embarked, and parted
on the 13th of September. Captain Estcourt was taken
ill the day betbre leaving Bona Vista, and died on the
lah. At Bona Vista, Assistant-Surgeon Harte, of the
Eclair, died ; and Dr. M'Clure died on the voyage to
Madeira. On the arrival of the steamer at Madeira,
the authorities refused permission to communicate with
the shore, as bad been done by the French at Goree.
From the date of her sailing from Madeira (Sept. 21),
up to the 30th of that month, seven deaths took place
from the fever, and eight fresh cases occurred.
The report of Mr. Consul Bendel to Lord Aberdeen
(dated San Antonio, Cape Verd, December 22, 1845)
sets forth, amongst a variety of details, that the anxiety
which the •tay of the Eclair at Bona Vista caused him
(the Consul), was of the most painful description, al-
though the medical men persisted in their belief that the
dise.se was merely the common African coast fever, and
that there was no danger of its spreading amongst the
people. This " non-infection" theory was subsequently
refuted by ft,cts. On the 20th September, seventeen
days after the departure of the steamer, a white Portu-
guese soldier, who had be en housed on the island with
the crew of the Eclair, died in the fort. The following
day another died, and two er three were reported as
sick. Up to the 9th of October an extraordinary heat
and an immense quantity of rain had been experienced.
The fever then showed itself most alarmingly, and each
succeeding day to the end of the month gave two and
sometimes three cases, all occurring within the imme-
diate vicinity of the house where the first death took
place.
The Portuguese practitioners maintained that the
fever arose from the presence of the stagnant water,
and held the same opinion till November the 20th, when
they openly delared it to be a fever of the worst de-
s( ription, and of a most contagious character. Up to
tf e first week in December the fever continued to rage,
and at that period it had found its way into almost all
the villages—the deaths averaging seven or eight daily.
Up to the 21st of December 250 had died at Bona Vista;
but it was stated in the report that for 14 days previ-
ously there had been no deaths in the port, and in three
of the country villages, although the fever still existed
in two of them. The English suffered dreadfully, hay-
ing lost one-third of their number. The leading symp-
toms of the disease were black vomit, pains in the head,
back, and thighs, with a suppression of urine, and
frequently the rupture of a blood-vessel. The fever
proved contagious to those who acted as nurses to the
sick, with scarcely ene exception. The Consul says,
that had the authorities of the place imagined that the
fever on board had exhibited a dangerous type, they
never would have granted pratique. Mr. Macaulay, it,
a letter transmitted to Lord Aberdeen (dated St.
Nicholas, Cape Verd Islands, 24th of December, 1845),
states his opinion that had the building used as a fever
hospital been properly fumigated and purified prior to
its re-oceuvation, and had the two patients there seized
with fever been kept from all intercourse with the
densely-populated and closely built town, no bad conse-
quences would have been experienced IA Buna Vista from
the visit of the Eclair.
These facts seem completely to overthrow the opinion
so decidedly expresssd by Sir W. Burnett—" Tnat the
fever in question arose from causes totally distinct from
infection ; that it was, in fact, the usual remittent fever
of the coast, produced by the influence of marsh miasmata,
heightened by other causes, such as the exposure of the
men, and the excesses committed by them." In the course
of his dispatch to the Secretary of the Admiralty, Sir W.
Burnett says,—"lt it can be fully and satisfactorily shown
that any person who had visited the ship or tents where
the sick were placed contracted the fever and com-
municated it to others, and they to other persons in suc-
cession, who had never visited the ships or the sick, then
there can be no reason to doubt the infectious nature of
the decease, but if nothing of this kind has taken place,
then the conclusion must be, that the disease is not infec-
tious, and is therefore incapable of being communicated;
in either case settling this long-contested question."
The opinion of Sir William appears to have been satis-
factorily set 'stride by the facts already adduced, and it is
seen that the fever was contagious as well as infectious

FICTION AND REALITY,
OR THE PEASANT OF THE OPERA-HOUSE AND
, THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER AS HE REALLY
IS.—(A CONTRAST.)
All the fashionable young ladies and the elegantly-
, dressed young gentlemen who frequent the Opera-
, house, have a sort of vague idea that the spruce
young peasants with broad- brimmed straw hats,
and shirtsleeves tied up with blue ribbon, and
flesh-coloured silk stockings and satin tights, as
seen on the stage, are true and exact repre•
entations of country latourers ; that these same
peasants, as they call them, are engaged all day senti-
mentally leaning against a tree and paying on a pipe to
a flock of sheep, and dancing every night under trees
illuminated by lamps, with young damsels as elegantly
dressed as themselves. And these young fashionables
think their papas and their uncles, who make protec-
tion speeches in Bond-ttreet or the House of Com-
mons,d very patriotic and wise men; and that that wieked
Sir Robert Peel, that odious Sir James Graham,
thisan
that dreadful revolutionary League, wish to destroyia
rural happiness, and to shut up the dear creatuhrets
all
union workhouses. And they further belieieveßteva
tohsets)oersateoraiields,
ogt(h)teurap, b
only seven
and
about oMu tr. labourersSheridan and
breakingt'
stones.r'
into contempt,
childrenwit h cold pi
tOht a t °
nothingcs in theirto
eat bags,
bu t and their r 1
,wivesp_ .v e s
and
inveigle
shillingshors e b
t a
an -swboiled
at together,
ei
ftiiveern, taic;ds of' wagesireebeing traders to make
young men
‘, protection to native industry ' unpopular, and to bring
eharminglyanin chorus,
that worthy class, the country gentlemen,
and that it is all a cunningly devised scheme tod
to
these charming and intereging
who dance so divinely alai sing
their dear Countryfactories,
living at the west (IA of Too-don, where they see nothing
equipages, elegant dresses and tall AA'
but gold lace,
men ; or if in the couentiray, surrounded tly all the profu-
draw all their ideasPPofr ages, 0 a gentleman's seat—
.ion and tasteful a
pet aro
maidlife nut imbibed at the
lady's who married the hand-
ohe footman,and who lives at she beautiful and
some
from
tasty lodge
at the entrance of the
park, and
who always curtstis so lo •
IN wU en the cart iage passes, and is so 1-
. , Lianktui, fctr. religious tracts, securing therok•
•4e tirc.:k. it iitinniel fri,m the hall,
off eh,tivs, for her fa 1 , _ .....ougn 01 C 44,
all Y-11" t(11 incution blankets and coats at Christmas.
. ,r,rhese yag- and e- -••4
y ignorant and sentimental young gentle-
1°491 Icww 00;11ing of cottages in ruins, the mother in

consumption, children In rill, no 4411 a6*
stolen sticks, a einner of boiled cabbage leaves anti horse
beans. Nol the stern realities of truth would have no
charms for them, so they give themselves up to the ar-
cadian fancies of opera tableaux. And so, buried in a
world of deception and delusion, like the French noblesse
of the last generation, they are totally unprepared for
the day of retribution, which may come like a thief in
the night.
It is to be hoped that there is enough of redeeming
virtue in free trade, now within our grasp, to avert this
lawful catastrophe.—The Struggle.

DESTRUCTION OF DOGS IN MAN-

CHESTER.

It has long been usual in Manchester for the autho-
rities to issue orders for the keeping-up or muzzlicg 01
dogs during the summer and autumn months, during
which h:,drophia is most prevalent. Formerly this was
done, under the now defunct Manchester police com-
missioners, by a man going constantly about the
streets with a sort of hatchet, with which he knocked
down the dogs that he found at large in the streets un-
muzzled. This gave rise to some complaints, fur occa-
sionally the poor animal escaped after receiving a blow
cr two, and much unnecessary cruelty was perpetrated-
Then fur a time a man was employed going about the
streets shooting any dog unmuzzled and at large ; but
this was occasionally very alarming to ladies and others
passing at the time, and not always without some risk ;
for on one occasion a boy, who was near a dog that was
thus shot at, received a large portion of the contents of
the gun in his leg, and then this practice was abandoned ;
and for the last few years, under the corporation, a
much more humane system of destroying the ani-
mals has been adopted. In 1843, the number .0f
these animals suffered to go at large increased
so greatly as to become no small nuisance. Vigorous
measures were, therefore, taken. Two men were con•
stantly going about the town, seizing all dogs that
were found in the streets unmuzzled, and these were
conveyed to the town's yard, Clarence-street, and
destroyed every evening, by the application of a
small quantity of prussic acid on the tongue of the
animal. In this way the number of dogs destroyed in
the five months, from the Ist of May to the Ist of Oc-
tober, in the year 1843, was little short of 700 ; in the
same period of 1844, about 600 dogs were destroyed ;
in 1845, about 600 ; but this year the work of destruc-
tion has commenced somewhat later—viz., on the 10th
of May—and from this cause, and the fact that the
number of animals has somewhat thinned by the destruc-
tion of former years, and that the survivors are either
more kept up, or are more generally provided with the
open wire muzzles—(which, by the way, are in-
finitely preferable to the close leathern ones in
use till lately, being much less heating, besides en-
abling the animal to breathe and to drink freely,
which the leathern ones did not)—owing, we say,
to these causes, the number of dogs destroyed this
season, before the Ist October, will in all probability not
exceed 500. The present system pursued is- to traces dog
home, and then summon the owner before the nuisance
committee of the council, and the option is given him
to pay a fine of 2s. 6d. or to deliver up the dog to be
destroyed. There are 10 stations whither dogs are
taken for this purpose, viz., the town's yard, Clarence-
street ; the Oldham-road police station ; the scavenging
and mannre yards in Chorlton-street, Portland-street ;
Pollard-street ; Rochdale-road ; Bridgewater-street ;
and Gloucester street (Oxford-road) ; also to the
Chorlton town-hall, for Chorlton-on-Medlock and
Hulme ; and the Ardwick township yard. The dog's
mouth being forced open, about halt a small teaspoonful
of the prussic acid is placed upon the tongue, and in
few seconds the dog is dead. The bodies of the animals
destroyed are removed daily, so that there is no danger
from their carcases being left to putrify. At present,
the daily number destroyed does not reach a score • but
in the dog-days the number destroyed will probably be
much greater. We are not aware of any large town in
the kingdom where so large a number of these animals
is annually destroyed ; but here, we are, fully persuaded
the work of destruction is a work of necessity, to keep
down the immense number of dogs that would other•
wise overrun the town.—Manchester Guardian.