can it be surprising
that many were sick, and that many died? The summer of 1820 was the
hottest and driest ever known in this country. For weeks in succession,
the thermometer, in the shade at St. Louis, was up to 96 deg. for hours in
the day. Not a cloud came over the sun, to afford a partial relief from
its burning influence. The fevers of that season were unusually rapid,
malignant, and unmanageable. Almost every mark of the yellow fever, as
laid down in the books, was exhibited in many cases, both in town and
country. The bilious fever put on its most malignant type. Black,
foetid matter was discharged from the stomach, and by stools. The
writer and all his family suffered severely that season. He lived
seventeen miles from St. Louis, on the road to St. Charles in Missouri,
on a farm. The settlement had been called healthy. The Missouri bottom
was one mile distant. Three miles west southwest, was the Creve-coeur
lake, a body of water several miles in length and half a mile in width,
connected by an outlet with the Missouri river. The water of this lake
was entirely stagnant, covered with a thick scum, and sent forth a
noisome smell. Fish in it died. My oldest son, a robust youth of ten
years of age, and my brother-in-law, a hale and stout young man,
sickened and died the first week in October. I was attacked the 5th day
of July, came as near dying as a person could and recover. All my
children were sick. While convalescent, in September, I took a long
journey to Cape Girardeau country, 120 miles south, and back through the
lead mine country to the Missouri river, 60 miles west of St. Louis, and
in all the route found that sickness had prevailed to the same extent.

At Vincennes and other parts of Indiana, disease triumphed. The country
around Vincennes, on the east side of the Wabash, is a sandy plain. A
gentleman who escaped the ravages of fever in that place, and who was
much engaged in nursing the sick and consoling the dying, stated to me
that nothing was so disheartening as the cloudless sky and burning sun
that continued unchanged for weeks in succession. Mortality prevailed to
a great extent along the banks of the Wabash. Hindostan, a town on the
east fork of White river, 38 miles from Vincennes on the road to
Louisville, was begun the preceding year. Seventy or eighty families had
crowded in at the commencement of the year 1820. The heavy timber of
poplar, (whitewood) oak and beech, had been cut down, the br