e from a decrease of the _miasma_, but
from a decrease of population, and a consequent want of subjects to
prey upon; and this indeed is a plausible idea; but admitting it to
be just, how are we to account for the almost invariable fatality
of the disorder, when at its height, and the comparative innocence
of it when on the decline? for _then_, the chance to those who had
it, was, that they would recover and survive the malady.

The old men seemed to indulge in a superstitious tradition, that
when this peculiar kind of epidemy attacks a country, it does not
return or continue for three or more years, but disappears
altogether, (after the first year,) and is followed the seventh
year by contagious rheums and expectoration, the violence of which
lasts from three to seven days, but is not fatal. Whether this
opinion be in general founded in truth I cannot determine; but in
the spring of the year 1806, which was the seventh year from the
appearance of the plague at Fas in 1799, a species of influenza
pervaded the whole country; the patient going to bed well, and, on
rising in the morning, a thick phlegm was expectorated, accompanied
by a distressing rheum, or cold in the head, with a cough, which
quickly reduced those affected to extreme weakness, but was seldom
fatal, continuing from three to seven days, with more or less
violence, and then gradually disappearing.
177
During the plague at Mogodor, the European merchants shut
themselves up in their respective houses, as is the practice in the
Levant; I did not take this precaution, but occasionally rode out
to take exercise on horseback. Riding one day out of the town, I
met the Governor's brother, who asked me where I was going, when
every other European was shut up? "To the garden," I
answered.--"And are you not aware that the garden and the adjacent
country is full of (_Jinune_) departed souls, who are busy in
smiting with the plague every one they meet?" I could not help
smiling, but told him, that I trusted to God only, who would not
allow any of the _Jinune_ to smite me unless it were his sovereign
will, and that if it were, he could effect it without the agency of
_Jinune_. On my return to town in the evening, the beach, from the
town-gate to the sanctuary of Seedi,[137] Mogodole was covered wit