Martyria; or, Andersonville Prison

by Augustus C. Hamlin

XIII.

Malaria, that curse of the Circassian race, which is the chief source of the inefficiency and mortality of their efforts of colonizations in semi-tropical climes, exerts but little influence upon the negroes, and hence they are admirably qualified for the occupation of pestilential soils.

It appears from the statistics of the English that remittent and intermittent fevers, which prove the great source of inefficiency and mortality among the white troops in tropical climes, exert comparatively but little influence upon the blacks.

The writer has observed the fatal effects of the pernicious fevers upon the white inhabitants of the low coasts of Georgia and South Carolina, and has seen men perish in a single night from the deadly action of the miasms, whilst the negroes were unaffected.

During the English expedition up the Nile nearly all the whites were prostrated by fevers, and none of the native blacks were affected. After the French landed at Vera Cruz the yellow fever found great numbers of victims among the Europeans; but according to the report of the inspector-general, Regnaud, not one of the 600 negro soldiers and sailors from the West Indies, though hard at work there, were attacked, or rather not one of them died. There are hundreds of similar examples to illustrate the theory.

We cannot escape the mephitism of the soil. So long as we respire the air, so long shall we receive into the system the deleterious vapors by the respiratory apparatus, which is the most perfect of the absorbing agents: the time of effect is determined only by the health, the strength, and vigor of our forces. The destroying elements may take effect at once, or they may be resisted for a long, though definite period of time. Malaria alone has a wide range among the causes of human misery, and it is believed to cause more than half of the mortality of the human families on the globe.

Its deadly action, in depopulating cities and provinces, is well attested in history, and its effect upon the intellectual expansion is still more marked; sadness, languor, paludal cachexia, scrofulous, deformed, and short-lived offspring, are among its train of evils. In the Roman states alone, sixty thousand perish every year from this paludal influence. These deltas of the Southern States are among the greater miasmatic foyers of the world, and are as deadly in their miasms as the Campagna of Italy or the Sunderbunds of Hindostan.

XIV.

There are many reasons to induce the belief, that if properly directed, the blacks may attain distinction in social life and progress, and a higher degree of perfection in physical development. The skeleton of the negro is firmer and heavier, the bones being larger and thicker than that of any other race; but physiologists observe that the muscular development does not correspond to the strong dimensions of the frame. This deficiency of nature may be explained by the want of proper nutrition, or to physical causes within human control, for all proportions in nature are harmonious. Two of the most admirable boxers that have appeared in the British arena were blacks, and the dark, swarthy hue of the famous wrestler, Marseilles, reminds how common is the tinge of African blood in South France, Spain, and Italy.

While statistics appear to exhibit the physical superiority of the blacks in the low countries, they also prove how prone to pulmonary disease are they when migrating to the uplands, or higher latitudes, and how fearful the mortality. Thus Nature, it seems, offers serious barriers to their progress, and boundaries within which they must confine themselves or perish.