river; and especially respecting the preservation
of Breydon, the noble expanse that now
receives the flood tide, and serves as a reservoir
of a power which, twice a day, scours out
the mouth of the haven, and keeps its entrance
in a navigable state. Outlets had been made,
but again and again became unavailable.
"The stormy wind and sea prevailing, the
mouth of the fifth haven, which had cost
great sums of money, was thereby choked, and
stopped up." In this extremity, with ruin
staring them in the face, it was finally
concluded, after many consultations and mature
deliberations, that whereas the church of
St. Nicolas, in Yarmouth, was then possessed
of some money, a great quantity of plate, and
many costly ornaments and vestments, the
same should be sold for the purpose of raising
money to make a navigable passage. "And
yet, nevertheless, the said haven did not long
continue in that course, but the same stopped
upp agene." Until at last, in 1560, a Dutch
engineer, named Joas or Joyce Johnson, "a
man of rare knowledge and experience in
works of that nature," was brought from
Holland, and appointed master of the works,
with wages of four shillings per day; and by
him the seventh and present haven was
constructed.

Hierus, or Yare, is the name of the stream
which has given so much trouble to the
occupants of new-formed land, the colonists of the
sands, whence the town was first named
Hiermuth—without the aspirate, Jermouth
—which, pronounced in Saxon fashion, is
Yarmouth. And without entering into local
squabbles, philosophers like you, gentle
reader, and myself, will honour the
"Inhabitantes of Greate Yermouthe" for the spirit
they have shown, and the struggle they have
gone through, with but little help from
friends and neighbours. "Their charges
have alwaies ben very greate, and their
Landes and Revenewes verye smalle, for they
doe live onlie by there trades unto the Seas,
and therebye doe maynteine themselfs, there
wifes and families, and the wholle Estate of
the said Towne": nevertheless, by courage
and self-dependence, by putting a resolute
shoulder to the impeded wheel, by helping
themselves instead of intreating others to
come and help them, they have gone on—
and may they prosper!

INFORMATION AGAINST A
POISONER.

THE subject of the present information, or
the hero of the present story is an Emanation.
I should say rather the heroine, for, like the
most famous poisoners of Italy and France,
the thing is feminine. Men tremble at her
soft, romantic name—which it has been the
good fortune of few among us never to have
heard—Malaria.

No, she is not crowded courts, drains, bad air,
and all that kind of bother. She is an Emanation
in her own right, not of mortal manufacture.
Foul city air is not Malaria. Foul
city air saps the foundation of our fleshly
castles, and makes wide the breach by which
Typhus enters, but foul city air generates no
fever by itself, and the fevers for which it
makes working ground and elbow-room are
all contagious fevers, passed from hand to
hand. Malaria destroys with a poison bowl
exclusively her own; the fevers she produces
are not communicable by the touch from
man to man; they are intermittent and
remittent, known to us in this country in their
mildest form, as ague, for example. In other
climes, Malaria destroys with a more terrible
energy, sweeping men, women, and children,
down by thousands. Her bowl is there filled
with its strongest dose, producing fevers,
remittent in form or even continued; still in no
case contagious.

It may profit us to know a little of the
story of this poisoner. She rises from the
surface of the earth, her form is airy,
imperceptible to any of our senses. She can no
more be grasped by the chemist than Titania
herself. We know her only by her deeds,
and they are terrible. Her deeds were crude
facts less than two centuries ago: it is only
about one hundred and sixty years since her
existence was inferred from them by Lancisi,
an Italian physician, who wrote a book about
the year 1695, upon the noxious effluvia from
marshes. She is a daughter of the sun,
unable to exist within the arctic circle, never
coming forth during the cold season of our
temperate regions, requiring nothing less than
the comfortable sustained warmth of at least
sixty degrees. In warmer climates she can
be most active where the heat is greatest.
The tropical heats of the West Indies develope
all her energies.

Like many fleshly workers under heat, the
impalpable Malaria also requires a little
soaking of the clay, a little drop of something
moist to keep her active. Dryness does not
wait her corrupt humour. As Venus sprang
out of the sea, Malaria will rise out of a
swamp, in full perfection. In this country
she doles out of her bowl the intermittent
fever poison almost wholly on our eastern
coast, in parts of Kent, Essex, Cambridgeshire,
Norfolk, Lincolnshire, and the East
Riding of Yorkshire, where there are marshes,
fens, or low grounds, sometimes overflowed
with water. Within the present century,
the elbow-room of Malaria in this country
has been very much contracted by the drainage
works that have converted marsh into dry
land. Agues are become rare among us,
though they were once common even in
London. Of agues contracted in London,
both James I. and Oliver Cromwell died.

Along the low coast of Holland the ague
cup is carried up and down. For ages it has
been quaffed by the dwellers about the
Pontine Marshes, near Rome. Malaria has
almost undisputed sway over the whole district