“It is said to be the original seat of the Yellow Fever.” [Bulama?] “The city is well built and the streets clean, but it is surrounded by sand-hills and ponds of stagnant water, which, within the tropics, are quite enough to generate disease. The inhabitants and those accustomed to the climate are not subject to this formidable disease; but all strangers, even those from the Havannah and the West India Islands are liable to the infection. No precautions can prevent its attack, and many have died at Xalapa, on the road to Mexico, who merely passed through this pestilential spot.” Dr King states, that if ever endemic fever derives its origin from a vitiated and malarious state of the atmosphere, Boa Vista abounds with the elements for its production. Among these he enumerates swamps and pools of stagnant water, in the immediate vicinity of Porto Sal Rey, and over the whole district of Rabil; patches of rich alluvial soil near the other villages, the recognized sources of noxious exhalations; the wretched food of the lower classes, and still more, the polluted atmosphere which they breathe in their crowded and ill-ventilated abodes, and the general disregard of cleanliness in their houses and streets, “a combination of morbid causes,” he says, “which would produce malignant fevers in any part of the world.” The relative position of Boa Vista to the African coast would further naturally lead to the expectation that it must be subject to diseases of the same character, and no one disputes that this is the case. The residents of the island, military, medical, and civil, concur in stating that endemic, bilious remittent fever, prevails there more or less every year; that there is no season in which it does not carry off several of the inhabitants, and that it often prevails epidemically. “The testimony of the most intelligent men in the island,” says Dr King, “including Dr Almeida, Senor Baptista (the Consul’s agent), the Mayor of Rabil, the Judge of Fundas Figieras, and the Judge at Old Town, removes every doubt as to the fact that fever prevails to a certain extent, and carries off several of the inhabitants in the months of November and December every year; and this endemic fever, which recurs annually, and which Dr Almeida calls the bilious remittent, does not always present the same mild aspect and character; on the contrary, it is well known that in certain years the disease was epidemical, and in comparison with other seasons, very fatal.” Dr M‘William records the fact, that such epidemic seasons occurred and proved unusually mortal in the years 1821–2, in 1827, and in 1833.