The delayed departure of the officers whose regiments have been draughted, affords me an opportunity of addressing to you some additional notes by the same conveyance. They have been detained in the expectation that some of them might have remained with the 39th regiment, in order to have increased its strength in officers, in proportion to its increase of privates; but the Commander in Chief not acceding to this arrangement, they are all ordered to embark, without loss of time, for England, and to take with them the sergeants and drummers; yet, on account of the extreme urgency of this sickly period, and the very limited number of assistants we have for hospital duty, we are allowed to detain the surgeon and mate of the 99th regiment; without whom, indeed, we must have been reduced to the greatest distress; for the surgeon of this corps has been my best support from the time of our arrival, being the only commissioned medical officer I have had with me, during the whole of our busy service.

Respecting the destination of the other gentlemen of the hospital staff and myself, I have nothing new to add. Incertitude is still the order of the day. We remain without receiving either pay or allowances, and subsist almost wholly upon our salt rations. Fortunately this is one of the few countries where but little money is required, or I should rather say, where if a man had much, it might be difficult to spend it. Fruit and vegetables are abundant, but the riches of Crœsus could not procure a regular supply of fresh animal provisions for our table. For my own part I am become so much a creole, and so fond of plantains, that I should experience but little hardship if these were the only food.

You will perceive from this letter, that I have again changed my home. After I had separated the happy group of convalescents from the sick, and removed them to distant quarters upon the coast, I left the patients then remaining at Mahaica under the care of Mr. Ord, acting surgeon to the 39th regiment, and returned to take charge of the hospital, at our greater depôt at La Bourgade. With infinite satisfaction I feel myself able to inform you that the high malignity of the disease begins to yield to the approach of a more benign season. Since my return hither, several patients have been admitted, in whom the fever appears under an intermittent type. If it were possible to divest myself of the regret I feel on account of the poor men’s sufferings, and from our sick list being, by any cause, increased, I might truly say that I received these cases with pleasure, hailing them as a pledge that our worst foe has run his career; for, if the fever should assume a remittent, or an intermittent course, we shall know how to oppose ourselves to its progress, and to prevent it from repeating the devastations it has committed in its continued form.

Still the hospital is sadly crowded, and, from the return made to me of the last week, the proportion of casualties does not seem to be yet diminished; but they now proceed less from cases recently admitted, than from the lingering remains of more violent disease. At the same time I may remark, that it is only from receiving a considerable proportion of intermittents, at once, that we are led to hope the fever is changing to a milder type, for repeated examples occurred, at Mahaica, of different patients being brought to the hospital at the same period, with the disease under all the varied forms of intermittent, remittent, and continued fever, yet each of them were occasionally converted into the most malignant “yellow fever,” and rapidly terminated in death.

Amidst all the afflicting histories of this destructive malady, I should rejoice exceedingly if it were in my power to report to you more favorably of the patients under surgical treatment in our hospital; but, unhappily, at the moment of our greatest pressure and anxiety regarding the fever, our services are most called for by the patients with sores and ulcers, who likewise feel the sad effects of climate and of season. In speaking upon this subject, I ought to add that the attention of Mr. Blackader, the surgeon, has been unremitted; and that his abilities are not less eminent than his zeal. His patients have been watched with a tender care, and he has been indefatigable in his endeavours to relieve them; the more so from their sufferings having been peculiarly the subject of our conversation. We are willing to hope that the unhappy difficulties he has met with, in his practice, may be more the effect of season than of climate, and that as the fevers grow milder with finer weather, the wounds and ulcers will also assume a more healthy disposition.

Whether from a wound, a scratch, the bite of a musquito, or the simplest excoriation, the progress of the sore has been the same. It seems, at first, to go on kindly, gradually advancing in a healing state, but before it is quite well, the patient loses his appetite, feels sickly, or is attacked with a febrile paroxysm, and sinks into a state of relaxation and debility; with the skin and muscles flaccid, the countenance pale, and the whole frame languid, and weak. The ulcer partaking of the general change grows black and foul, and, sloughing away, becomes wider and deeper than it was at first. After a time, the patient recovers his lost strength, and by the aid of bark, wine, and tonics, the part again assumes a healthy aspect, florid granulations form, and the healing process is renewed. Proceeding now as before it often reaches that state, which creates the daily hope of a new cuticle forming over it to complete the cure: but a febrile exacerbation again seizes the patient, and the whole disastrous round is repeated. The disease extends itself still wider than before, and the energies of the system being further impaired, it is longer ere it throws off its foulness, to take on a clean and healthy appearance. Yet this does follow, and the now wide and ragged sore again begins to heal. The patient likewise recovers a degree of strength, but remains considerably weakened. The healing of the wound advances, though slowly, and again holds out fair prospects to the miserable sufferer; but, before it has cicatrized with new skin, he relapses, the ulcer blackens, becomes foul and offensive, and the parts around slough away to a frightful extent; the patient sinking far below his former debility. He next recovers but a slight degree of strength; and the sore only clears itself to widen its ravages; the appetite is destroyed; extreme lassitude prevails; cough, and hectic fever supervene; and the patient lingers out a few wretched weeks, until death kindly offers him relief. Often the event is more rapid; but it happens not unfrequently that the patient is deluded three, four, or more times with the fairest prospect of recovery, then, suddenly and without any apparent cause, is thrown back, growing more and more feeble from each attack, until every energy of the constitution is exhausted.

Having witnessed, with extreme pain, the cruel sufferings of this class of our patients, we are particularly happy to avail ourselves of the present return of the officers, to put a party of sick, from the surgical wards, under their protection to England, where they will have the chance of speedy recovery, and of soon returning to their duty. As our hospitals will be thus considerably relieved, I shall be the better enabled to spare the services of Mr. Beane, one of our most useful assistants, whom I have placed on board to take charge of them upon the passage. I should remark that the season proves almost equally sickly among the Dutch troops as the English, although far less fatal. With the Hollanders the fever has been milder, and of a remittent type, giving way to the common treatment used in what is termed the bilious remittent fever of the country. The Dutch surgeon-major, who has been many years in the colony, is now upon the sick list; but, in him, the fever appears as an intermittent. On calling to visit him, I found him in a regular paroxysm of ague, the form which the fever very commonly assumes among the creoles, and the negroes.

We have lately had the misfortune to be deprived of another of our assistants, but his loss was the effect of accident. He was stationed at Maiconuy, where he was in the habit of bathing frequently in the river. One evening, as he was taking his favorite exercise of swimming across to the opposite bank, he suddenly disappeared, and was seen no more. We do not learn that any one was in the water with him at the time, but those who have since been here, from that post, inform us that it was generally attributed to an alligator seizing him, and suddenly dragging him down.

The return of our comrades to England gives me an opportunity of sending you the first copy of a new periodical paper, just published in this colony, called the Demarara Gazette. You will find from the composition no less than from the printing, and the paper, that it is quite an original.

But what will you say of our growing importance when I tell you, that we have not only a newspaper established, to afford us all the advantages of a speedy circulation of intelligence; and a strong regiment of black rangers, raised for the defence of the colony; but that we have also a colonial corps, formed from among the respectable part of the inhabitants, for the mutual protection of each other’s property, and for the general defence of the settlement.