For a more minute examination of the cases of the guards at the Fort, and of Pathi and others, as presented by Dr M‘William, we refer to the Note of Dr Browne, Appendix No. III. (p. 306),[35] who has there shown the real value of these cases, considered as links forming a chain of circumstantial evidence. Footnote 35: _Vide_ the Report itself. The authentic facts attending the intercourse of the ship’s company with the inhabitants of the island, afford further evidence that no infection could have been communicated by the former to the latter. Thus, it is admitted that Captain Estcourt, the commander of the ship, went directly from the infected vessel to reside with Mr Macaulay, the judge: no infection was communicated to Mr Macaulay, or any part of his family. The officers of the gun-room—midshipmen, warrant, and engineer—on disembarking from the ship, took a house for themselves and their servants in the town, and mixed unreservedly with the inhabitants: no infection was communicated to any individual with whom they had intercourse. The crew obtained or took leave to pay frequent visits from the small island to the town of Porto Sal Rey, where, according to Dr M‘William, they resorted chiefly to the house of one Georgio, who kept a spirit store; the only consequence of which visit, considered by Dr M‘William a remarkable one, appears to have been that this man (and “shortly afterwards” two females who associated with them) was attacked with headache and general fever on the evening of the day he was visited by the “Eclair’s” people; a result which admits of a more obvious solution than the communication of febrile contagion on the part of persons who were themselves in perfect health. The soiled linen of the officers and crew having been brought on shore on the first arrival of the vessel, was immediately given out to be washed to the washerwomen of Porto Sal Rey, and the careful search made after these women, brought to light no fewer than seventeen persons who were so employed. “The soiled clothes,” says Dr King, “linen, cotton, and flannel, which had accumulated in the officers’ cabin from the time of their departure from Sierra Leone, were contained in at least 12 bags, which were taken on shore at Porto Sal Rey the same evening the ship arrived, and distributed next morning (22nd August) to the washerwomen of the town. Now, if the disease possesses the power of reproduction, its poison must [according to general opinion] have been as certainly communicated through the medium of _fomites_ as by direct contact with the sick on board or at the fort; yet none of the washerwomen nor any in their families were attacked with fever until November, showing an interval of 70 days after exposure to the infection.”