t even Broussonet[127] believed me when he embarked. I
hope your opinion that it diminishes with you will prove well
founded; but I fear its ravages are only suspended by the great
heats; besides, you should recollect that people cannot die twice,
and with a population so diminished, you must not expect so many as
formerly on your daily dead-list. Mrs. M., who desires her
remembrance to you, is well, but barring plague, would rather be at
Tangier than Gibraltar; so would I.

Ever truly thine,

J. MATRA.

[Footnote 126: The emperor's prime-minister, or _talb cadus_ at
that time.]

[Footnote 127: Dr. Broussonet, French consul. This gentleman
was intendant of the botanical garden at Montpelier: he, with
another doctor embarked for Europe just as the plague began to
appear at Mogodor in the year 1799.]
166
_Some Account of a peculiar Species of Plague which depopulated
West Barbary in 1799 and 1800, and to the Effects of which the
Author was an eye-witness._

From various circumstances and appearances, and from the character
of the epidemical distemper which raged lately in the south of
Spain, there is every reason to suppose, it was similar to that
distemper or plague which depopulated West Barbary; for, whether we
call it by the more reconcileable appellation of the epidemy, or
yellow fever, it was undoubtedly a plague, and a most destructive
one; for wherever it prevailed, it invariably carried off, in a few
months, one-half, or one-third, of the population.

It does not appear how the plague originated in Fas in the year
1799.[128] Some persons, who were there at the time it broke out,
have confidently ascribed it to infected merchandise imported into
that place from the East; whilst others, of equal veracity and
judgment, have not scrupled to ascribe it to the locusts which had
infested West Barbary during the seven preceding years, the
destruction of which was followed by the (_jedrie_) small-pox,
167 which pervaded the country, and was generally fatal. The _jedrie_
is supposed to be the forerunner of this species of epidemy, as
appears by an ancient Arabic manuscript, which gives an account of
the same disorder having carried off two-thirds of the inhabitants
of West Barbary about four centuries since.