Demarara, May 1797.
The commandant received the reply of the commander in chief on the 25th
ult., and I am directed to take my departure from the coast of Guiana by
the earliest opportunity. This may, therefore, be the last letter I
shall address to you, from the continent of South America.
Anticipating these instructions I had prepared cases for my collection
of Indian specimens; which I have now packed up, and embarked on board
the ship Homer, for London, hoping some day to meet them again in the
neighbourhood of Bedford Square. Fortunately after long expectation, the
model of an Indian house, which the friendly Bercheych had promised to
procure me, from the inhabitants of the forest, arrived just in time to
be enclosed: as it is complete in furniture and utensils, I shall look
forward, with much pleasure, to the period, when I may have the
opportunity of explaining to you, in England, the appropriate uses of
all the little apparatus which you will find attached to it.
I am also indebted to the commandant, Col. Hislop, for the model of an
Indian house, brought to him by the Bucks, which you will likewise find
in the collection embarked on board the Homer.
It has happened, for some weeks past, that we have again been very
particularly indebted to the king, for our allowance of daily food.
Unable to procure fresh provisions in the colony, and none having been
imported, the hospital mess has been wholly fed with the salt rations
issued from his Majesty’s stores; and, no alternative remaining, we have
been compelled to satisfy ourselves with a diet of salt beef and
pease-soup, improved with only the occasional variety of pease-soup and
saltpork.
I should stand accused of neglecting our contract, were I to omit
telling you that, in a late provision-hunting excursion, our party met
two Dutch ladies upon the road, travelling, with great state, in a
chaise drawn by six naked slaves, instead of horses. This was a scene of
novelty, it being one of the toils of slavery which we had not before
chanced to witness; nor indeed had we heard that it was practised.
It is matter of much concern to me not to be able to improve the report
of our surgical patients, before I quit the hospitals, which have been
so long the objects of my anxious care, but, so far from this being the
case, it is deemed necessary to embark another body of these unfortunate
sufferers on board the ships now going to England.
Next to fever, ulcers have been the severest scourge of the troops, and
in both of these maladies we have noticed multitudes of instances, in
sad proof of the fatal influence of climate upon our patients: while an
European has been cut off in a few hours, by the yellow fever, a
colonist has experienced a slight attack of the bilious remittent, and a
negro had to support the simple paroxysm of an ague: or, while an
English soldier has lingered, and died, from only a slight scratch or
excoriation, the African, and the creole, have rapidly recovered from
the widest and most perilous ulcers.
If I state to you the result of twelve months experience, as it now
appears before me, in a return which I have prepared for the commander
in chief, it is not with a view of increasing your terrors, respecting
the fatality of this climate, but rather of counteracting, in your mind,
a prejudice which I have said prevails too extensively, regarding the
insalubrity of Demarara, and indeed of the whole coast of Guiana.
I observed before, that the commonly accepted opinion, that these
settlements were more unhealthy than the West India islands, seemed to
be incorrect; and, if I now remark that in the course of a year our loss
has amounted to nearly 350 men, the returns from even the most favored
of the islands, I have much reason to suspect, will sanction me in
considering the assertion as decidedly erroneous: for we are taught to
believe that few, if any, of the detachments of the very numerous army,
under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby, have escaped with so little
loss, as the division serving in these colonies. In some of the islands
we know that the mortality has been frightfully greater: in few—perhaps
in none, has it been less. Yet, alas! it is, at best, but a melancholy
consolation, that we should find cause to rejoice in having lost only
one-fourth of our number!
In the course of last week, and particularly on the 26th and 27th of the
late month of April, we had many heavy showers of rain, accompanied with
much thunder and lightning, also with the loud croakings of hosts of
enormous frogs, and the distressful visitings of thick clouds of
musquitoes; all of which are regarded as strong indications of a
returning wet season. That the thunder and lightning have been less
frequent, the musquitoes fewer, the breeze stronger, and the loud
bellowings of the frogs less annoying, during the dry season, than they
had been during the wet weather that preceded it, is a fact, to which
the eyes and ears of all here can bear testimony: but how far these
circumstances recurring with the showers of a lunar period, may be
indicative of the returning invasion of the long wet season, I am not
able to pronounce with equal certainty. Probability might seem to favor
the opinion: yet the rains have again diminished, and the best observers
do not positively declare our pleasant dry season to be at an end;
therefore, as the wet season is commonly later in the islands, than upon
this coast, I do not altogether despair of reaching Martinique in time
to see that island during the continuance of fine weather.