4-0 LETTERS AND PAPERS any thing to eat but the locusts ; and living on them for several months, till a most abundant crop enabled them to satisfy the cravings of nature, they ate abundantly of tlie new corn, which producing a fever, brought on the contagion. At this time the small-pox pervaded the country, and was generally fatal. The small-pox is thought to be the forerunner of this species of contagion, as appears by an ancient Arabic manuscript, which gives a full account of the same disorder having carried off two-thirds of the inhabitants of West Barbary about four hundred years since ; but, however the dreadful epidemy originated, the leading features of the disorder were novel, and more dreadful than the common plague of Turkey, or that of Syria or Egypt, as the following observations will demonstrate.

In the month of April, 1799, a plague of the most dreadful kind manifested itself at the city of Old Fas, which soon after communicated itself to the new city. About this time the Emperor Muley Soliman ben Muhamed was preparing a numerous army, and was on the eve of departure to visit his Southern dominions, and to take possession of the province of Abda, which had not acknowledged him as Emperor, but was, as well as the port of Saffy, in a state of rebellion. The Emperor left Fas early in the summer, and proceeded to Sallee, Mazagan, and Saffee; thence to Marocco and Mogodor. Now the plague began to kindle in all the Southern provinces, first carrying off one or two the first day, three or four the second day, six or eight the third day.