The year in Bengall can properly be divided into three seasons only, of four months each; from the middle of June to the middle of October is the rainy season; from the middle of October to the middle of February is the cold season, which never rises to a degree of freezing; the whole globe does not yield a more desirable or delightful climate than Bengall during these four months; but the freedom of living, which the Europeans fall into at this season, sow the seeds of those diseases which spring up in all the succeeding months of the year. From the middle of February to the middle of June is the hot, windy, dry season; during which no rain falls but what comes in storms of fierce winds and tremendous thunder and lightning, called North Westers, the quarter they always rise from; and the Provinces, particularly Bengall, is more or less healthy, in proportion to the number of these storms; when in this season the air is frequently agitated and refreshed with these North Westers, accompanied with rain, (for they are often dry,) and the inhabitants do not expose themselves to the intense sun and violent hot winds that blow in March, April, and May, it is generally found to be the most healthy of the year; otherwise (as in the year 1744, when we had no rain from the twentieth of October to the twentieth of June) this season produces high inflammatory disorders of the liver, breast, pleura, and intestines, with dysenteries, and a deplorable species of the Small-Pox. From the middle of July (the second month of the rainy season) there is little or no wind, a stagnation of air follows, and during the remainder of this month, and the months of August and September, the atmosphere is loaded with suffocating heat and moisture, the parents of putrefaction; and nervous putrid fevers (approaching sometimes to pestilential) take the lead, and mark the dangerous season; from these fevers the Natives frequently recover, but the Europeans seldom, especially if they in the preceding May and June indulged too freely in those two _bewitching delicacies, Mangos_ and _Mango Fish_, indiscriminately with the free use of _flesh_ and _wine_; for these (_all together_) load the whole habit with impurities, and never fail of yielding Death a plentiful harvest, in the three last months of this putrid season: If any are seized with the Small-Pox in these months, it is ever of the most malignant kind, and usually fatal. It will not, I hope, be deemed a useless digression, if I bestow a few remarks on the nature of this _Bengall Fever_.