The climate of Cuba is, for the tropics, a very tolerable one, quite enjoyable indeed from November to the beginning of May, during which time the heat is rarely oppressive. The summer season is extremely enervating, and in many parts of the island actually dangerous, on account of the excessive heat and the incessant torrents of rain, which together create an unhealthy steaming miasma. The forests, with their prodigious stratas of decaying vegetation, emit, especially in summer, unwholesome malarial vapours, and the lagoons and marshes on the broads are sometimes hidden for days at a time by a dense and deadly but perfectly white fog. Yellow fever is said not to have made its appearance till 1761; at any rate it is from that date only that it has been regarded as a distinct disease indigenous to the island. The deadly vomito nigro has often appeared in various parts of Cuba in epidemic as well as isolated form. It rarely if ever attacks the negroes, but has proved only too fatal to newcomers.[3] I cannot help thinking that it is mainly due to the filthy habits of a people unacquainted with the hygienic laws, and who do not object to have their latrines in the middle of their kitchens, and to a general system of drainage, which, even in the capital and in the other principal towns, is wretchedly antiquated. Dysentery annually carries off a great number of European colonists, especially children, and cholera very frequently decimates the blacks and Chinese, without doing the slightest injury to the whites among whom they live. The wholesomest parts of the island are in the eastern provinces, where yellow fever rarely makes its appearance. This is simply due to a healthy combination of sea and mountain breezes. The outlying island of Pinos, already mentioned, is remarkably healthy, no epidemic ever having been known there, and it is, consequently, a favourite resort with the wealthier Cubans and European colonists, who have built charming cottages amongst its fragrant pine-groves.