’136 BRITISH AMERICA.

foundation of worlds, while the rain comes down in such torrents as to threaten a second deluge. During these storms, accidents seldom occur; and in the fiscourse of two or three hours, the heavens clear up beautifully bright, and the most delightful evening a» that fancy can c1eate usually succeeds. The vegetable ’ world is refreshed, the animal creation recovers from the lassitude occasioned by the oppressive heat of the meridian sun, the birds hop, chirping, from bough to bough, the cattle turn out from the shade to graze, and the purified air of the evening is sufiiciently cooled

to be truly agreeable.

VOlney, speaking of the climate of the United States, says, “ Autumnal intermittent fevers, or quotidian agues, tertian, quartan, &c., constitute another class

, of diseases that prevails in the United States, to a degree of which no idea could be conceived. They ale particularly endemic in places recently cleared, in valleys on the borders of waters, either running or stagnant, near ponds, lakes, mills, dams, marshes, 82c. These autumnal fevers are not directly fatal, but they gradually undermine the constitution, and very sensibly shorten life. Other travellers have ob- j served before me, that in South Carolina, for instance, a person is as old at fifty as an European at sixty— _"‘ five or seventy; and I have heard all the Englishmen with whom I was acquainted in the United States say, that their friends who have been settled a few years in the Southern, 01 Central States, appear to 7: them to grow as old again as they would have done ,

in England or Scotland. ‘ 5