But the atmosphere is effectually cleared; man breathes once more, and all nature seems to revive under the exhilarating freshness of the gale:--the natives, good-humoured and thoughtless, laugh over the less serious consequences, and soon forget the worst; happy in the belief that, at any rate, they are free from the epidemical disorders of other regions. Still such variations from the ordinary courses of nature cannot but be productive of strange consequences; and, though the transient effects of an overcharged atmosphere may be quickly dispelled by a pampero, and the people be really free from the epidemics of other countries, there is every reason to believe that, in this particular climate, the human system is in a high degree susceptible of affections which elsewhere would not be deemed worth a moment's consideration. Besides those I have already spoken of as arising from the north wind, old wounds are found to burst out afresh, new ones are very difficult to heal; an apparently trivial sprain will induce a weakness of the part requiring years perhaps to recover from, as I know from my own experience; and lock-jaw from the most trifling accidents is so common as to constitute the cause of a very great portion of the deaths from hurts in the public hospitals. A cut thumb, a nail run into the hand or foot, a lacerated muscle, will generally terminate in it; and our own medical men well know how great a proportion of our wounded in the attack of 1806 and 1807 died from this dreadful cause. The native practitioners attribute its frequent occurrence to some peculiarity in the atmosphere acting upon the system in a manner they are as yet unable to explain. Under the name of the "mal de siete dias" (the seven days' sickness), a vast number of children are carried off by it in the first week of their existence; but, as this mortality is principally limited to the lower orders, it may perhaps in most cases be traced to mismanagement and neglect. With us, the long confinement of the mother ensures the same care of the infant in the first weeks of its life; but, in a country where the mother leaves her bed in two or three days to return to her work, the child must often be neglected. Many a Buenos Ayrean washerwoman may be seen at her usual work at the riverside three or four days after her delivery, with her infant lying for the greater part of the day upon a piece of cold hide, beside her on the damp ground. Can any one wonder that it takes cold and dies? There was a time, and but few years ago, when it was gravely asserted that the mortality amongst infants arose from their being baptized with cold water, and the authorities, concurring in the notion, actually issued a decree that none but warm water should be used for such purposes in the churches. I believe, however, that the deaths were not found to diminish, and that the priests are again permitted to use cold water as before, though I doubt the enactment to the contrary having ever