l66 THE PLAGUE.

Some Account of a peculiar Species of Plague which depo" pulated West Barhary in 1799 and 1800, and to the Effects of which the Author was an eye-witness.

" From various circumstances and appearances, and from the character of the epidemical distemper which raged lately in the south of Spain, there is every reason to suppose, it was similar to that distemper or plague which depopulated West Barbary ; for, whether we call it by the more reconcileable appellation of the epidemy, or yellow fever, it was undoubtedly a plague, and a most destructive one ; for wherever it prevailed, it invariably carried off, in a few months, onehalf, or one-third, of the population.

It does not appear how the plague originated in Fas in the year 1799.

' Some persons, who were there at the time it broke out, have confidently ascribed it to infected merchandise imported into that place from the East; whilst others, of equal veracity and judgment, have not scrupled to ascribe it to the locusts which had infested West Barbary during the seven preceding years, the destruction of which was followed by the (jedrie) small-pox, which pervaded * See the Author's observations, in a letter to Mr. Willis, in Gentleman's Magazine, February, 1805.