Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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During This Flood The Waters Were From Thirty To
Forty Feet In Breadth, And From Eight To Ten Feet Deep.
It was
supposed that, issuing from some subterranean basin, formed by
successive infiltrations, they had flowed into the recently cleared
arable lands.
Many houses were carried away by the torrent; and the
inundation became the more dangerous for the stores, in consequence
of the gate of the town, which could alone afford an outlet to the
waters, being accidentally closed. It was necessary to make a
breach in the wall on the sea-side. More than thirty persons
perished, and the damage was computed at half a million of
piastres. The stagnant water, which infected the stores, the
cellars, and the dungeons of the public prison, no doubt diffused
miasms in the air, which, as a predisposing cause, may have
accelerated the development of the yellow fever; but I believe that
the inundation of the Rio de la Guayra was no more the primary
cause, than the overflowings of the Guadalquivir, the Xenil, and
the Gual-Medina, were at Seville, at Ecija, and at Malaga, the
primary causes of the fatal epidemics of 1800 and 1804. I examined
with attention the bed of the torrent of La Guayra; and found it to
consist merely of a barren soil, blocks of mica-slate, and gneiss,
containing pyrites detached from the Sierra de Avila, but nothing
that could have had any effect in deteriorating the purity of the
air.
Since the years 1797 and 1798, at which periods there prevailed
dreadful mortality at Philadelphia, St. Lucia, and St. Domingo, the
yellow fever has continued its ravages at La Guayra.
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