[33] The “Sunderland Times” gives publicity to the following frightful narrative, drawn up by Captain Edward Robinson, of Sunderland, commander of the ship _Raleigh_, of South Shields:--“I arrived at this place in the beginning of May, 1858, being sent to bring home a vessel whose captain died of yellow fever; little did I think, before leaving home, that I should have witnessed the sufferings of so many of my fellow-creatures that were ill of this dreadful epidemic. I was told it would be all over before I arrived, but I found that, so far from that being the case, its ravages were unmitigated. In the street that I lodged in, five in one family were buried from the house in one day. The Rio journals were publishing in their columns, ‘No cases of yellow fever to-day.’ One ship at the port had seven captains dead before she could be brought out of the place. The vessel--the _Raleigh_ of South Shields--that I have come home in command of, had her captain, chief officer, second officer, and four of her crew stricken down by the disease. On the day before the Captain died I visited him at the hospital; I there witnessed such sights as I hope never again to see--poor sailors in the height of the fearful malady, with the black vomit, vomiting dark fluid like coffee. I shall never forget the looks they gave me, and how their poor dull eyes brightened as I gave them a word of comfort, and told them they would get better. Next day, when I returned to see them, I found the whole gone--the captain and six of his crew, all dead and buried. Still, ‘No cases of fever,’ say the Rio journals. The number carried off by yellow fever from February to May, 1858, amounted to 1609, upwards of 600 of the deaths being among English sailors. The presence of a plague fever is not to be wondered at, the state of the town being a disgrace to civilized people. All manner of filth is to be met with in most parts of the town. Dead animals and filth I cannot describe meet your eye and offend your senses almost everywhere. “My brother, now sixty-eight years of age, and who has been thirty-six years at Rio, informs me that he has often seen Europeans on ’Change in the morning, who died and were buried on the same evening. He has seen Rio cleared five times of Europeans. The pestilence, he believes, comes from the flat marshy land near Rio. The natives burn tar-barrels to purify the atmosphere.” CHAPTER VIII. EARTH, AIR, AND WATER IN RELATION TO MAN--HOW MODIFIED BY HIM--RESULTS OF THAT MODIFICATION--ACTION AND REACTION.