rying the malaria and noxious gases that have not
been absorbed by the forests, which cover the main portion of the land;
and to the great abundance of oxygen exuded by the plants in return.
This excessive moisture and the decomposition of dead vegetable matter
is the cause of the intermittent fevers that prevail in all parts of the
peninsula, where the yellow fever, under a mild form generally, is also
endemic. When it appears, as this year, in an epidemic form, the natives
themselves enjoy no immunity from its ravages, and fall victims to it as
well as unacclimated foreigners.

These epidemics, those of smallpox and other diseases that at times make
their appearance in Yucatan, generally present themselves after the
rainy season, particularly if the rains have been excessive. The country
being extremely flat, the drainage is necessarily very bad: and in
places like Merida, for example, where a crowding of population exists,
and the cleanliness of the streets is utterly disregarded by the proper
authorities, the decomposition of vegetable and animal matter is very
large; and the miasmas generated, being carried with the vapors arising
from the constant evaporation of stagnant waters, are the origin of
those scourges that decimate the inhabitants. Yucatan, isolated as it
is, its small territory nearly surrounded by water, ought to be, if the
laws of health were properly enforced, one of the most healthy countries
on the earth; where, as in the Island of Cozumel, people should only die
of old age or accident. The thermometer varies but little, averaging
about 80 deg. _Far_. True, it rises in the months of July and August as
high as 96 deg. in the shade, but it seldom falls below 65 deg. in the
month of December. In the dry season, from January to June, the trees
become divested of their leaves, that fall more particularly in March
and April. Then the sun, returning from the south on its way to the
north, passes over the land and darts its scorching perpendicular rays
on it, causing every living creature to thirst for a drop of cool water;
the heat being increased by the burning of those parts of the forests
that have been cut down to prepare fields for cultivation.

In the portion of the peninsula, about one-third of it, that still
remains in possession of the white, the Santa Cruz Indians holding,
since 1847, the richest and most fertile, two-thirds, the soil is
entirely stony. The arable loam, a few inches in thickness