Bristol news. [volume] (Bristol, Va. & Tenn.) 1867-189?, 1878-10-08

not half the size Of Liyerpool-of SO |
deaths there; showing a mortality
greater than one in four of those at
tackled. Since the number of attacks
is still on the increase. We read
that at Vicksburg, so famous during
the war, but of altogether secondary
Importance in its commercial charac-
ter, thirty-six patients died on the
same day ;. and at Memphis, subor-
diuate centre of the cotton traffic,
and a kind of inland port through
which the produce of Tennessee is
brought down to Mississippi, no few
er than eighty-four died within the
same period of twenty-four hours. -
1t is no surprising thing to learn that
in the latter city many dead have
been found unburied in their houses.
| A loss of eighty-four per diem would
in no long time depopulate Memphis,
partly through terror and consequent
flight, partly through the actual loss,
remembering that each death rePre>
sents three or four cases of helpless
and dangerous illness. In the less
wholesome streets the mortality must
be such as to leave numerous houses
without inhabitants,
The country upon which this awful
pestiIence has fallen is of semi
tropical character-hot and damp
covered with luxuriant vegetation.
partly inhabited and cultivated,
Astounding in vast forests and extern
sive swamps,' in short, cursed with
every climatic condition, every social ,
economical, agricultural circum-
stances that could afford advantage
to the pest. All fevers are favored
by heat acting upon the decaying
vegetation of animal matter, espe-
cially when the air is so saturated
with moisture that the decay is moi
prompt and the generated gases are
not quickly carried off. This descrip-
ton fits the Gulf States of the South
and the valley of the Mississippi in
particular, and it cannot but suggest
to every man, even slightly acquaint-
ed with the course of malarial ano
climatic fevers, the idea of country
sure to suffer severely from every suct
disease, This, indeed, is the char
> acteristic of the Sonth. The country
fever. as it is called, renders he
coasts and lowlands often wholly un-
inhabitabie during the warmer months
of the year; SO that while farmers
having to reap their harvests of rice
cotton, maize, on fertile lands, find
necessary to retire at light with thei
families to huts built in the pine for
ests for, as they are locally called
barrens) of the CarOlinas, until The
first frost gives token that the low
country is safe. On the lower Mis-
sissippi the natural evils of swamp
and half cultivated land, owing 1t
richness to deep deposits of half de-
cayed vegetable matter, are aggra-
4 waited by the fact that no small par
of the surface lies below the highe
level of the stream; and, but for thu
levees, analogous to the dykes o
Holland, would be always uninhabita
BILE and periodics lily flooded, so as t.
render its cultivation uncertain if no
impossible. But the Crescent Cit.
and the country Immediately ar0unt
| it are worse situated still. The LIANT
floats as it were, in or upon con-
tinuous bed of water extending from
point above the city to the utmos
exrremity of the delta. 1t has beer
formed by the deposit of mud from
the Rocky Mountains and highland
Of Missouri and Upper Mississippi
and no doubt cemented by quantitie
Of drift wood and other vegetabl mat
ter carried down by the stream ant
intermixed with its lighter and les
cohesive sediment. The result il
ground, apparently solid, under which
the digger finds water, and nothing
but water, at couple of feet or 81
below the surface. The graves o
the surrounding cemeteries are no
sunk below the soil, but built above
it, The parts of the city wherein
the traffic chiefly gathers, where ves-
> sells are loaded with the produce
brought down from half o dozer
wealthy States on either side of the
mighty river, are naturally unclear
and disorderly. The fact that the
lower classes are in some measure Irish
but chiefly African, and are no long
err amenabIe to the strict discipline
of slavery, has DO doubt added very
materially to the unhealthiness o.
these quarters. New Orleans, like
the other towns of Southern coasts
at least as far as Charleston, is SO
irregularly visited by the yellow fever
; that the citizens regard it as a sure
and inevitable condition of their
lives. 1t hangs over them as the
malaria over the Roman Campagna
But unlike the Roman peasanty the
people Of the South will venture
where profit is to be made or land
cultivated, where they can grow the
largest crops of cotton and tobacco,
sugar and coffee, despite the dangers
with which they are thyeatened.-
"Manhattan," once familiar to all
London as our own correspondent
has remarked, that terrible as is the
yellow fever, it is not on the whole
half so destructive as the per-
manent malaria called the country
fever; and that, whereas the fomel
simply kills, the latter destroys for
ever the constitution of numbers who
nominally recover. Such is the char