_February 22d._
... Old physicians indeed predicted it; but who believed them?...
It is as though something sluggish and viewless, dormant and deadly, had
been suddenly upstirred to furious life by the wind of robes and tread
of myriad dancing feet,--by the crash of cymbals and heavy vibration of
drums! Within a few days there has been a frightful increase of the
visitation, an almost incredible expansion of the invisible poison: the
number of new cases and of deaths has successively doubled, tripled,
quadrupled....
... Great caldrons of tar are kindled now at night in the more thickly
peopled streets,--about one hundred paces apart, each being tended by an
Indian laborer in the pay of the city: this is done with the idea of
purifying the air. These sinister fires are never lighted but in times
of pestilence and of tempest: on hurricane nights, when enormous waves
roll in from the fathomless sea upon one of the most fearful coasts in
the world, and great vessels are being driven ashore, such is the
illumination by which the brave men of the coast make desperate efforts
to save the lives of shipwrecked men, often at the cost of their
own.[20]
[Footnote 20: During a hurricane, several years ago, a West Indian
steamer was disabled at a dangerously brief distance from the coast of
the island by having her propeller fouled. Some broken and drifting
rigging had become wrapped around it. One of the crew, a Martinique
mulatto, tied a rope about his waist, took his knife between his teeth,
dived overboard, and in that tremendous sea performed the difficult feat
of disengaging the propeller, and thus saving the steamer from otherwise
certain destruction.... This brave fellow received the Cross of the
Legion of Honor....]