Those enchanted regions have inhabitants worthy of their abode. The hospitality of the Creoles is proverbial. Every family is glad to receive the stranger and soon considers him as a friend and brother. The Creole women have the elegance of their palm-trees. They are as fresh and blooming as the corolla that expands at the dawn. Their kind courtesy envelops you like the penetrating odors which come from the wonderful vegetation that surrounds them. A Frenchman who meets another Frenchman in these far-off countries regards him as a part of France which has come to smile an him, and the intimacy, which is formed, is indissoluble.
The traveller can never forget the touching scenes of the varangue, the enchanting evenings passed there, and the joyous cup of friendship there interchanged; sweet emotions contributing to longevity more than is commonly believed.
One finds one's self in that fortunate land surrounded by hygienical influences which are most favorable to a long life. Let us add that the alimentary productions are of the first quality. The water in the stony basins is limpid, and the succulent fruits are varied enough to almost suffice for the nourishment of the inhabitants. How can one be a favorite of fortune and a prey to spleen without going to visit these places, which exhale a sovereign balm?
Nevertheless, under that sky brilliant with pure light, in that atmosphere of freshness of perfume and of harmony, it seemed to me that a tint of infinite melancholy was everywhere diffused. I regarded the glorious sky, I listened to the trembling foliage, I breathed the penetrating odors, but something was everywhere wanting. When I sought what it was that I missed, I found it was the trees of my native land, which do not grow in every zone, and where they do grow are not so fine as here. I instinctively sought the wide-spreading oak, the lofty walnut, the chestnut with its tender verdure, the tall slender poplar, the modest willow, and the birch with its light shadow. I recalled the odor of their foliage, associated with my dearest remembrances, but in vain. I felt then an immense and inexpressible void that nothing could fill, and tears naturally sprang from these vague and profound impressions. I hungered, I thirsted for the odor of the trees that had overshadowed my infancy—an insatiable hunger, a thirst nothing could satisfy. On returning from that remote voyage, especially during the first weeks, I went to the nursery of the Luxembourg, (alas! poor nursery!) I sought the fresh shades of the Bois de Boulogne, and there, during long rambles, I crushed the leaves in my hands and inhaled the perfume they gave out. I felt my lungs expand, as if a new life was infused into them with the odor I breathed. This invisible aliment which we derive from the exhalations of the plants to which we have been accustomed from infancy, had become for me an absolute necessity, a condition of health.
A climate, a country may not at all times be favorable to longevity, or at all times unhealthy. The predominance of one industrial pursuit over another, the choice of one material instead of another for building houses, or a sudden change in the general habits, necessarily modifies, in a great degree, the conditions of longevity. This is what has happened in the Isle of Bourbon. Till within a few years, no epidemic or contagious malady was known in that fortunate island; no fever, no cholera, no throat complaints, no small-pox, etc. But all these diseases have attacked its inhabitants since our manures, our materials for building, and our products in general, have been used by them in large quantities.
The drying up of a marsh, the cutting down of a forest, the substitution of one crop for another, may effect atmospheric changes through an extended radius, which will strengthen or weaken the vitality of the people. Some years since, there was a marsh behind the city of Cairo, which was separated from the desert by a hill. It was always noticed that the pestilential epidemics appeared to spring from that unhealthy spot and finally to spread throughout the east. The Pacha of Egypt, without thinking of this coincidence, noticed, on the other hand, that the hill behind the marsh entirely concealed the fine view which he would have from his palace, if it were removed. He gave orders to cut the hill down and to fill up the marsh with its débris, so that the winds which were formerly checked, had free circulation and purified the atmosphere, while the soil, thoroughly modified, ceased to emit the pestilential effluvia, Since that event the plague has not reappeared. A caprice of the Pacha effected more than all the quarantines and all the efforts of science, He has freed the world, perhaps for ever, from the most terrible of scourges.
It is known that the cholera comes from India. It is engendered in the immense triangular space formed by two rivers: the Ganges and the Brahmapootra. It is the East India Company according to M. le Comte de Waren, that should be accused of treason to humanity. It is that power which has destroyed the canals and the derivations of the two finest rivers in the world. During the last twenty-five years of English occupation the number of pools in a single district, that of Nort Arcoth, which burst or were destroyed, amounted to eleven hundred. In the time of the Mogul conquerors, a fine canal, the Doab, extending from Delhi, fertilized two hundred leagues in its course. This canal is destroyed, and the lands, once so fertile and healthy, are now the infectious lair of wild beasts, having been depopulated by disease and death.
The hygienic condition of different countries, then, may be modified in various ways. In 1698, Bigot de Molville, president à mortier of the Parliament of Normandy, found, after careful research, that, of all the cities of France, Rouen possessed the greatest number of octogenarians and centenarians. Toward the middle of the last century this superiority was claimed by Boulogne-sur-mer, which retained it for nearly fifty years, and was then called the patrie des vieillards.
In a recent communication to the Academy, M. de Garogna remarked that, in the printed or manuscript accounts we possess respecting the former eruptions of Santorin, many very interesting details are found concerning the different maladies occasioned by these eruptions, and observed at that epoch in the island, which support what we have said of the variable hygienic state of different places. According to these reports, the pathological result of the different eruptions included especially alarming complications, serious cerebral difficulties, suffocation, and derangement in the alimentary canal. He proved that morbid influences were only manifest when the direction of the wind brought the volcanic emanations. The parts of the island out of the course of the wind showed no trace of the maladies in question. Moreover, the sanitary condition of the places within reach of the wind became worse or improved according to the rise and fall of the wind. It should also be noticed that the morbid influence of the volcanic emanations extended to islands more or less remote from Santorin.