When the wind came from below, we tacked down the
stream; sometimes it blew very strong, and then the schooner,
having the wind abeam, laboured through the waves, shipping often
heavy seas which washed everything that was loose from one side
of the deck to the other.
On arriving at Para, I found the once cheerful and healthy city
desolated by two terrible epidemics. The yellow fever, which
visited the place the previous year (1850) for the first time
since the discovery of the country, still lingered after having
carried off nearly 5 percent of the population. The number of
persons who were attacked, namely, three-fourths of the entire
population, showed how general the onslaught is of an epidemic on
its first appearance in a place. At the heels of this plague came
the smallpox. The yellow fever had fallen most severely on the
whites and mamelucos, the negroes wholly escaping; but the
smallpox attacked more especially the Indians, negroes, and
people of mixed colour, sparing the whites almost entirely, and
taking off about a twentieth part of the population in the course
of the four months of its stay.
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