1847] As it appeared at Boa Vista. 219 her departure, that we have now to do. Before taking up the narrative of these, let us here premise that, from all accounts, the island was entirely free from sickness at the date of the steamer's arrival, as well as during her stay there. It is said by Mr. Macaulay to be " a remarkably healthy place,” and to be by no means subject to any pernicious fevers. In some seasons, it appears that there is a good deal of remittent fever; and this has been known occasionally to assume a more than usually severe and fatal character. The last year when such was the case was 1833. In order that nothing at all important may be omitted in our narrative, we may state that the English consul, in his letter of the 22nd Dec. 1845 to Lord Aberdeen, alludes to the extraordinary heat and unusually heavy rains—“ events which were surprising to the oldest inhabitant"-that had occurred up to the 9th of October. Porto Sal Rey is, as we have already said, the chief town of the island: one of its districts is called Pao de Varella. Rabil is about four miles distant from Porto Sal Rey, and Moradinha about half a mile from Rabil. While the Eclair was at Boa Vista, the seamen seemed to have resorted chiefly to the house of a man called Justinian da Silva Georgio, who keeps a spirit-store in Porto Sal Rey. It is remarkable that this man was attacked with headache and general fever on the evening of the day he was visited by the Eclair's people; he was attended by Dr. Almeida and seen by many of his friends during his illness, which lasted a fortnight; amongst the latter were two females, called Anna Gaspar and Rosinha San Antao, both of whom had slight fever shortly afterwards. It is but necessary to mention that both these women (prostitutes, we suppose.-Rev.) had been visited by people from the Eclair; they soon recovered, and their illness at the time attracted no notice whatever." These were the only cases of sickness that occurred among the inhabitants of Porto Sal Rey, during the stay of the Eclair at Boa Vista. It should be also mentioned that, while the officers &c. resided on shore, several of them, the captain's cook, and some other servants were taken ill, and were, according to the strict orders of Capt. Estcourt, immediately conveyed to the fort at the entrance of the harbour. Let us now see what occurred to the small military guard stationed there during, and immediately after, its occupancy by the crew of the Eclair. Dr. McWilliam's account is as follows: "When the crew took possession of the Fort they found a guard of three soldiers there. They had been on this post already three or four days. Their names were Athanasio Perez, Acting Corporal, dark mulatto, aged 26 years; Pedro Manoel, private, negro, aged 30; Antonio dos Santos, private, mulatto, aged 25. This guard slept in front of the upper room occupied by the sick, and often went into it. The corporal had a headache two days after the sick were landed, which at first yielded to cooling fomentations. In two days more he and his comrades were relieved, and he was still rather unwell, but making no complaint was posted as a sentry at the barracks in Porto Sal Rey. He was however soon taken ill, and sent to his house in Pao de Varella, where he was confined some weeks. His case caused no alarm, nor was he attended by any medical man, further than being seen once by Dr. Almeida during his convalescence. The other two soldiers had also attacks of fever, the one three weeks or so after he left the Fort, Vicente da Cruz Silva, dark mulatto native, aged 29; "The guard was on duty at the Fort six or seven days; none of them were at all affected during this time. They however all had fever afterwards, when the disease was prevalent in the town, of which Luis Briza, the European, died. "Third guard. In the routine of duty the second guard was relieved by Corporal Joaquim Agostinho, European Portuguese; 66 Private Joao Alexandre Roque, European Portuguese; and By the evidence of Miguel Barbosa, the only survivor of this guard, it ap pears that he and his comrades were at the Fort several days before and after its evacuation by the sick of the Eclair.' They slept in a small cook-house under the rampart. The same day the Eclair' left, Miguel was ordered by the corporal Agostinho to sweep out the rooms which had been occupied by the sick, and that all three of them went into the rooms on this occasion. According to his account, on the day after the steamer sailed, the corporal was attacked with fever and died in three days, delirious, and vomiting a black fluid. The other European, Joao Alexandre Roque, was similarly seized on the day following, and died on the fourth day with fever, delirium and black vomit. Both these men were seen by Dr. Almeida, who told me they were in articulo mortis when he was called to them. "Pedro Manoel, a native negro soldier, was sent by Major Mascarenhas, the Military Commandant, to attend the sick soldiers at the Fort; he was with them from an early period of their illness up to the time of their death, and remained at the Fort for several days afterwards, in company with Miguel Barbosa. Before they left the fort some gunpowder was exploded in the rooms which the 'Eclair's' people had occupied; and it is said that they were whitewashed some time afterwards. "Another negro soldier, called Manoel Antonio Alves, who was on duty with the second guard, was ordered by the Commandant to bury the bodies of Agostinho and Roque. For this purpose he proceeded to the small island accompanied with Joaquim Farenga and Manoel Luis, both native soldiers. He left his comrades in the boat, and stripping himself, ran up to the Fort in a state of nudity, and there, with the assistance of Miguel Barbosa and Pedro Manoel, rolled the bodies in quilts, and carried them down to the boat, which transported them to the beach, about a mile and a half to the southward of the town, where they were buried in the sand. The fourth guard was constituted of this man, (Manoel Antonio Alves,) Lorenzo Samed, and Pedro Gonzalves, all native soldiers. The same boat, that conveyed them to the Fort, on its return brought Miguel Barbosa and Pedro Manoel to Porto Sal Rey. The Commandant, however, deemed it advisable not to admit them at once into the barracks, but sent them to a house in the upper and northern end of the town called Beira,* which is a part of the District Pao de Varella. "This is a row of four small houses, divided from each other by rough rouble partitions. The uppermost was occupied by a mulatto native woman of the name of Theresa Maria Jesus; the next by the two soldiers; the next to that by a Portuguese woman called Anna Gallinha, and a native woman named Anna Texeira; and the other by a Portuguese man called Jose Carlos da Lisboa, a writer." 1847) As it appeared at Boa Vista. 221 "The soldiers of the fourth guard lived in a room next to that in which the sick of the Eclair' had been. Manoel Antonio Alves was taken ill in the course of two days, and, strange to say, was at once conveyed to the barracks in Porto Sal Rey. Pedro Gonzalves and Lorenzo Samed were in their turn in the course of ten or twelve days relieved from duty at the Fort. Gonzalves was taken ill with fever some days after he returned to the barracks, and died on the 26th of November. Lorenzo Samed was also attacked, and recovered after a dangerous illness. "The fifth guard at the Fort, Andre Vass and Jose Sancha, two negro private soldiers, were sent to the Fort to replace the fourth guard. Jose Sancha was attacked with fever three days after he had been there; upon which the Commandant resolved for a while to withdraw the guard altogether from that fatal post. Both the soldiers therefore returned to the barracks, where Vass was also taken ill in the course of three days." P. 84. From this statement it appears that the only fatal cases among the guard at the Fort were those of the two Europeans, who were there when the sick of the Eclair left on the 12th of September. Both of these men sickened a day or two afterwards, and died within the next three or four days; i. e. about the 20th of the month or so. Some, indeed, of the other soldiers also-who, it should be remembered, were either mulattoes or negroes-had been ill; but only in a slight degree. Let us now follow the two men Barbosa and Manoel, when, upon leaving the Fort about the 25th September, they went on shore to live at Beira. "It is of the utmost importance," says Dr. Mc William, that every circumstance connected with their stay here be carefully noted, as it afterwards turned out that the very first (fatal) case of fever in the town appeared in the room adjoining that in which these two soldiers were lodged." Although neither of them was so ill at this time as to be confined to bed, it is obvious that they had the germs of the disease about them.* After remaining in the house for a week or so, they went to the barracks where, it seems, both were laid up. Among their most frequent visitors at Beira were their neighbours Gallinha and Texeira; the former, indeed, had been in constant attendance upon them, and had cooked their provisions. She was attacked about three or four days after they left, and died with high fever, delirium, and black vomit. This was on or about the 16th of October-a little more than a month after the sailing of the Eclair. Up to this time, no apprehension had existed among the residents of Porto Sal Rey, although it was known that two soldiers had previously died in the fort, some weeks before; it was then thought that the disease would not spread to the town. "Their clothes were taken by the wife of Silvester Jose Romess, a negro mason, to be washed. Silvester himself had also been a visitor of the soldiers when in the house at Beira; he had never been on board the Eclair' or at the Fort, but was attacked with fever soon after the soldiers returned to the barracks, as were also his daughter, niece, and wife, but the latter not until the fever had become general in the town." It may be as well to mention here, that of 17 women who washed the soiled linen brought from the Eclair, not one of them was seized with the fever before the end of October, by which time the disease already prevailed in the town; "so that in none of these cases can the occurrence of the fever be fairly attributed to infectious matter conveyed by the linen." The next fatal case occurred in a mulatto man, Affonso by name, who lived only twenty yards from Anna Gallinha, and who had frequently visited her; he died two days after her. A native mulatto woman, who lived next door to this man, and who visited both him and Anna Gallinha, was attacked with fever on the 19th: she also died. The man, who carried the bodies of Affonso and of Gallinha to burial, was two days afterwards seized; he died. The persons who had waited upon him, straightway sickened: one of them died. The occupants of the other two houses in the Beira were taken ill about the same time. Theresa Jesus, and also Anna Texeira (who lived in the same room with Anna Gallinha) recovered; but Lisboa the writer, a Portuguese, died on the 27th or 28th. "Among those who visited this person, was the son of Senhor Carvahal, merchant in Porto Sal Rey; this youtn, aged 18, had passed two nights in the house of his friend. He sickened the very day that Lisboa died, and died himself on the 4th November. He had not, as far as could be discovered, had any intercourse with any other infected person, save his friend. He was nursed by his mother, sister, and father, who, like himself, were dark mulatto natives; but none of them suffered. "The disease had attacked several persons in Porto Sal Rey proper, or the lower part of the town, by the end of October; and some of the soldiers were sick in the barracks at this time. The force on the island is in general about forty soldiers, who, with few exceptions, are natives of the Cape de Verds. Before the late invasion of fever, there was one major and commandant, one lieutenant, and forty-one soldiers, including serjeants and corporals. Of the fortyone soldiers, thirty-two were negroes or very dark mulattoes, and nine were European Portuguese. The whole were attacked with fever, which proved fatal to eight of the nine Europeans; two of them died at the Fort, and the other six in the barracks at Porto Sal Rey. Of the native soldiers three died." P. 86. Meanwhile, the Governor with his suite, several of the better class of Portuguese, and the greater number of the English, had left the island about the end of October for other islands of the group, where rigid quarantine was kept up against Boa Vista. "The whole of those," says Dr. M. "who left the island, have, I believe, continued perfectly free from fever, with the very notable exception of one family which returned to it in November," under the belief that the disease had nearly, if not altogether, disappeared. The particulars of this case are too interesting to be passed over: "Mr. Pettingal and his family, consisting of his wife and daughter, a young lady about twenty years of age, were lodged for the first night on their return to Boa Vista, in the house of Mr. Macaulay, and on the following day removed to their own house. A day or two subsequently, two mulatto girls who, during the absence of the family at San Nicholao, had been in charge of the house, were both taken ill with fever; and although one was sent home immediately, the other remained in the house three days after she was attacked, and was during this time frequently visited by Miss Pettingal. Both of the mulatto women recovered; but on the 17th of November, or six days after the return of the family to Boa Vista, Miss Pettingal was seized with symptoms of fever, which in fortyeight hours were unequivocal, being marked by black vomit and retention of urine, and terminated fatally on the afternoon of the 24th November, or the seventh day from being attacked. "Miss Pettingal was sedulously attended during her illness by Mrs. Learner, 1847] As it appeared at Boa Vista. 223 an English nurse, and constantly visited by her father, mother, and Dr. Kenny, her medical attendant. The captain of an American merchant-ship, who had been at Porto Sal Rey for some weeks, very frequently visited Mr. Pettingal's house during his daughter's illness, and assisted, at least on one occasion, in shifting the bed on which she lay from one room to another. John Dachin, an English servant of Mr. Macaulay, also assisted during Miss Pettingal's illness, and slept one night in the house. "John Dachin was attacked on the 25th November, and died on the fith day with the most malignant symptoms of yellow fever in the house of Mr. Macaulay. Mrs. Learner must have been attacked almost immediately after Miss Pettingall's death, for she died on the 27th November. “ Dr. Kenny was taken ill about the same time, and also died on the 27th, at Rabil." P. 87. The American Captain afterwards sickened and died; and subsequently Mr. Pettingal himself fell a victim in the first week of December.* During the latter half of November, and throughout December (1845), and part of January (1846), the disease was at its height in Porto Sal Rey; sometimes six or seven persons dying in one day. The fever in the town began to assume a milder character in the month of February. "There were a few cases in March, and I saw," says Dr. M'William, three so late as early in April. In these, there was saffron-coloured suffusion of the eyes, but no black vomit. Two of them were blacks, and the other was a European boy. All recovered. By the end of April, the town was quite free from fever." The following is a tabular view of the mortality which occurred in Porto Sal Rey: Ratio of deaths in the population, 1 in 201 English, including two Americans who were ex posed to the fever In one of the northern villages of the island, a case somewhat similar to that of the Pettingal family occurred. Of 23 persons, who left a place where the fever existed, 8 returned some time after, while the disease however still prevailed in the village. All these caught the fever, and 4 of them died. The remaining 15, who did not return, entirely escaped. "The exemption," says Dr. M William, "in persons who removed in time from infected places was clearly shown in many instances. Dr. Almeida, by changing the residence of his family from place to place, succeeded in keeping the whole of them intact. The same gentleman for some time prevented the introduction of the disease into Fundo das Figueiras, by the establishment of a sanitary cordon; and afterwards retarded its progress by the imperfect means of segregation of the sick which he had in his power. Boaventura was for some weeks without a case of fever, although the disease was raging at Cabeçada, a few hundred yards only from it, by the adoption of measures to prevent inter course." |