Excerpt from West Indies: Extracts From the Journal of John Candler, Whilst Travelling in Jamaica At St. Thomas we changed our quarters fi'om the mail-boat to a new steamer man-of-war of 240-horse power, carrying six officers and seventy men, charged with the mails to Porto Rico, Hayti, Cuba, and Jamaica. Such a vessel, I suppose, never sailed in these seas before, and never before was such a voyage performed so expeditiously. The distance is more than 800 miles, which we ran in four days and three hours, including all stops and detentions. The capital of Porto Rico is a large town and handsome, built at right angles, and beautifully paved: the inhabitants and garrison about In walking through its streets in the evening I experienced the same stifling sensation in the atmosphere which we had felt before in Barbadoes and Tortola: it seemed as if exertion would kill me: I walked slowly and languidly, and was almost afraid to walk at all. The West Indies are now very sickly. In Barbadoes the troops are encamped, for the sake of health: we left three army-surgeons there who came out in the same packet. We had one case of yel low-fever on board the steamer, and two others of beginning sick ness. Port-royal has lost within the year two surgeons and twelve assistant-surgeons, and a great many soldiers and sailors; and the town of Kingston, where we now are, is very unhealthy. Samuel Oughton, one of the Baptist missionaries, tells me he has buried thirty persons of his congregation (a very large one, amount ing to at least besides many children within the last six weeks. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.