The country for many miles round Bethlehem is most pleasingly diversified with rising grounds; the soil is rich, and better cultivated than any part of America I before saw. Until within a few years past this neighbourhood has been distinguished for the salubrity of its climate, but fevers, chiefly bilious and intermittent, have increased to a very great degree of late, and, indeed, not only here, but in many other parts of Pennsylvania, which have been long settled. During the last autumn, more people suffered from sickness in the well cultivated parts of the country than had ever been remembered. Various reasons have been assigned for this increase of fevers in Pennsylvania, but it appears most probably to be owing to the unequal quantities of rain that have fallen of late years, and to the unprecedented mildness of the winters. Bethlehem is visited during summer time by great numbers of people from the neighbouring large towns, who are led thither by curiosity or pleasure; and regularly, twice a week throughout the year, a public stage waggon runs between it and Philadelphia. We engaged this carriage to ourselves, and early on the second day from that on which we quitted Bethlehem, reached the capital, after an absence of, somewhat more than, five months. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _LETTER _ XXXVIII. _Leave Philadelphia.—Arrive at New York.—Visit Long Island.—Dreadful havoc by the Yellow Fever.—Dutch Inhabitants suspicious of Strangers.—Excellent Farmers.—Number of Inhabitants.—Culture of Corn.—Immense Quantities of Grouse and Deer.—Laws to protect them.—Increase of the same.—Decrease of Beavers.—New York agreeable to Strangers.—Conclusion._ MY DEAR SIR, New York, January 1797. [Sidenote: LEAVE PHILADELPHIA.]