These considerations afford all the evidence which the nature of the case admits of, that the sickness which affected the island on this occasion arose, not from the landing of the sick of the “Eclair,” but from climatic and endemic causes. To sum up the whole of this case, then, it appears that the evidence in favour of the allegation that fever was imported into Boa Vista by the “Eclair,” amounts to this: that four men, not of the ship’s crew, were attacked with fever while performing military service in a locality in which no fewer than 60 of the crew themselves were seized; that one man not of the ship’s crew who worked as a labourer on board the ship “about eight” or “two” days, had a slight attack of fever, while 62 men also not of the ship’s crew, and who also in like manner worked as labourers on board the ship a longer time, were wholly unaffected; and that a month after the sailing of the vessel, a woman was attacked with fever who happened to be a next-door neighbour to two of the soldiers who had served on duty at the Fort—one of whom was unaffected, and the other not even confined to bed—simultaneously with the children of the labourer (Pathi) who resided in one of the dirtiest localities of the island. Against such evidence, if evidence it can be called, must be weighed the following countervailing considerations:— It is admitted that the “Eclair” had been exposed on the coast of Africa to the causes which usually develope epidemic fever in that country; that intensity was given to those causes by circumstances which occurred at Sierra Leone, where she took in green wood as fuel, and where her men went on shore during the rainy and sickly season, and indulged in the unlimited use of ardent spirits; that her hold was in a pestiferous condition, and that a quantity of putrid mud had collected between her timbers. It is proved that the fever which broke out under these circumstances was the common endemic African coast fever, which, it is admitted, is not contagious, and which is assumed to have become contagious on this particular occasion, expressly to account for its alleged importation. It is admitted that on the landing of the ship’s crew at Boa Vista, though the men mixed freely with the islanders,—though the officers lodged in the town,—and though, when some of them became sick, they were nursed by the inhabitants,—there was no communication of the disease in a single instance. It is admitted that of seventeen washerwomen who washed the linen of the officers and crew, not one became infected, although all these women, except two, suffered severely from the disease at subsequent periods after the epidemic became general. It is admitted that with the exception of one case, which has been proved on inquiry to have been no real exception, 87[37] labourers worked on board or in the neighbourhood of the ship daily, and returned to their homes at night, without taking any precautions,—without becoming themselves