fever was united vomiting of putrid blood; now it presented the diarrhœa of the cholera patient; now the putrid dysentery of pernicious fever. Some died in eight or ten hours; others lasted through three, four, or even seven days. Men more than women, and the youth, lively and vigorous, more than the feeble and infirm, were the field preferred by the epidemic. No one escaped its deleterious influence, and the Spaniard and Indian, the negro, the mulatto, and the mestizo all paid their tribute to the contagion, which showed no respect in its depredations. In its course, it sometimes skipped populations; and while it swooped pitilessly down upon some obscure and distant village, it neglected some town close by and exposed to its attack. Sometimes it seemed to spare the Indians, only to return later and make a clean sweep of them.
There were great sadness and horror in Merida when notice was brought of the rapid, frequent, and painful deaths, which were taking place in Campeche, and which suggested the existence of the plague; the more so as an effort was made to minimize the reports of conditions. The pest, the sombre and frightful pest, which brings death as a daily thought to the minds of all; and not sweet and peaceful death, but the most distressing of all, death in solitude and abandonment! The stupor, caused by the news, did not prevent some measures of sanitation to prevent the invasion of the contagion, the principal of which was isolation. The city completely separated itself, closed the highways, set numerous guards in the roads, and all the inhabitants turned their eyes to God, imploring pity; the temples were thronged and deeds of mercy were more frequent and general.
Nothing, however, sufficed to stay the advance of the disease; in turn, it attacked Merida, leaping over all the populations in the line of progress, and appearing in the city at the end of July. At first it attacked but few, here and there a person; although the number stricken did not cause a panic, the promptness with which they died struck terror. This, however, was but the beginning of the affliction; because, afterward, in the first