After the cold weather had completely destroyed this disorder, it did not appear again in the United States till the next year, when it was imported to Baltimore and New Haven; a distance from each other of more than five hundred miles.  The cold weather again destroyed it, till carried, in 1795, to Charleston and New York, equally distant from each other; and this summer it was imported to Charleston, New York, Boston, and Newbery Port; a distance of one thousand five hundred miles along the coast; but fortunately the early N.W. winds destroyed it in all these places before it had made any considerable progress.

A quarantine upon vessels from the infected islands would effectually prevent the importation of this plague; but if performed in the literal sense of the word, it would materially hurt the West India trade of the Americans.

You have little to fear from this disorder being brought to England; experience has clearly proved, this fever cannot exist in a cold climate; but was it to be imported to the south of Europe, the consequences would be dreadful indeed.  I before told you, the negroes were not afflicted with the yellow fever, though universally employed as nurses to the sick.

A disease that will affect but one species of men is not new.  About the year 1652, a very dreadful and uncommon plague ravaged this part of America, and actually extirpated several nations of the Indians, without, in a single instance, affecting the white emigrants, though continually among them.  This strange circumstance the fanatics of New England accounted for in their usual way, as appears from several of their sermons, still preserved:—­

“It was a just judgment of God upon these heathenish and idolatrous nations; the Lord took this method of destroying them, that he might make the more room for his chosen people.”  A philosopher would perhaps demand a better reason.  Apropos of philosophers—­An american writer has been endeavouring to investigate the age of the world, from the Falls of Niagara! According to his calculation (which, by the by, is not a little curious) it is 36960 years since the first rain fell upon the face of the earth!

Yours, &c.

Boston, December 19th, 1796.

DEAR SIR,

I before hinted to you, that the Americans pay very little attention to their fisheries.

Exclusive of the shad fishery, which is only two months in the year, there is not one individual, either in the city of Philadelphia, or it’s vicinity, who procures a livelihood by catching fish in the Delaware, though that river abounds with sturgeon, perch, cat-fish, eels, and a vast variety of others, which would meet with a sure sale in the Philadelphia markets:  but this is a trifle to their neglect of the greatest fishery in the universe; for such certainly is that on the banks of Newfoundland.