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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 5, March, 1858 by Various
page 45 of 278 (16%)
composure or stillness was regained in any part of the building except
my own rooms, to which I betook myself as soon as possible, and slept
till sunrise, too soundly for any mystical visitation whatever to have
disturbed my rest.

The next day, in spite of the brief influence of the Norther, the first
case of yellow fever showed itself in the hospital; before night seven
had sickened, and one, already reduced by chronic disease, died. I had
hoped to bury Jackson decently, in the cemetery of the city, where his
vexed mortality might rest in peace under the oleanders and china-trees,
shut in by the hedge of Cherokee roses that guards the enclosure from
the prairie, a living wall of glassy green, strewn with ivory-white buds
and blossoms, fair and pure; but on applying for a burial-spot, the
city authorities, panic-stricken cowards that they were, denied me the
privilege even of a prairie grave, outside the cemetery hedge, for the
poor fellow. In vain did I represent that he had died of lingering
disease, and that nowise contagious; nothing moved them. It was enough
that there was yellow fever in the ward where he died. I was forthwith
strictly ordered to have all the dead from the hospital buried on the
sand-flats at the east end of the island.

What a place that is it is scarcely possible to describe. Wide and
dreary levels of sand, some four or five feet lower than the town,
and flooded by high tides; the only vegetation a scanty, dingy gray,
brittle, crackling growth,--bitter sandworts and the like; over and
through which the abominable tawny sand-crabs are constantly executing
diabolic waltzes on the tips of their eight legs, vanishing into the
ground like imps as you approach; curlews start from behind the loose
drifts of sand and float away with heartbroken cries seaward; little
sandpipers twitter plaintively, running through the weeds; and great,
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