Confining our attention at present to the third column, that of comparative mortality, we cannot but be surprised at the two following results: (1) the extreme healthiness of the country districts generally, and of the cities in Upper Canada; and (2) the extreme mortality of Montreal, notwithstanding the beauty of its streets and the substantial comfort of its mansions. It is natural to suppose that some peculiar disaster that year befel the city, from which the rest of the Province was exempt. Let us endeavour, therefore, to see how far the same ratio holds in other years.

In the Prothonotary's office are tabulated, year by year, the number of deaths and the increase of population by birth; Ottawa, Vaudreuil, Two Mountains, Terrebonne, Leinster, Berthier, Richelieu, St. Hyacinthe, Rouville, Verchères, Chambly, Huntingdon, Beauharnois, Missisquoi, Stanstead, and Shefford, containing a population of 428,588 souls, according to the census of 1851; partly rural, partly gathered into towns; subject to the same

climatal relations as Montreal, and inhabited by a people having the same religion and habits of life. The balance of wealth and the means of comfort are obviously in favour of the city. If Montreal has more than its share of sick persons, through the attraction of the hospitals, the same is true of Quebec and Toronto. Moreover, it is proverbial how long persons live in these establishments, owing to the kind and watchful nursing of the Sisters of Charity. And whatever increased mortality may be due to this cause, is probably more than counterbalanced by the number of consumptive patients who are sent out of the city into the country to die. The following are the returns, commencing with 1851, when first we have an accurate census of population. It will be remembered that 1852 was the year of the great fire, and 1854 of the cholera.

* The registration districts having been altered in 1858, these numbers are inserted hypothetically to complete the average.

It is not pretended that these tables are precisely correct. Absolute accuracy is of course unattainable in a country where there is no compulsory system of registration; the yearly returns of births and deaths being simply the records kept of religious ceremonies. In the country districts of Upper Canada, doubtless a large number of infants are born and corpses interred without any other record than in the family bible, if indeed in that. Still, each of the Upper Canadian cities, where deaths at least are recorded, shows so healthy a condition that the mortality of the country is probably not much greater than that recorded. But in Lower Canada, where the religious habits of the Catholic population almost compel resort to the font and to the cemetery, we may regard an average of 7 years as a fair criterion of its sanitary condition.

On examining the tables for the country districts, we find an extremely rapid rate of increase, being no less than 22 per thou

sand each year. This speaks well, not only for the morality and industry of the inhabitants, but also for the resources of the country. The mortality, however, appears slightly on the increase, and presents an average considerably above the mortality of the whole province in 1851. This average is not essentially disturbed by the cholera year. It is probable that the extra mortality of the rural districts of Lower above Upper Canada, is due not so much to the severity of the climate (which in Ottawa city closely resembles that of a large part of the Montreal District) as to the close stoving and intensely dry and heated rooms; a habit which would doubtless carry off a much larger number of victims, were it not for the extreme purity of the surrounding atmosphere.

The point, however of most vital importance, for it affects the lives of thousands, and the health of myriads, is the excessive mortality of Montreal. Not only did it present in 1851 a ratio of death greater than that of any city in Canada or New England; amounting to 8 per 1,000 over Boston, with its immense and crowded Irish population; 9 per 1,000 over Quebec, with its bleak climate, narrow streets and rock-bound courts; 20 per 1,000 over the five cities of the West, and the same over the country district, six times as populous, in the midst of which it raises its beautiful domes and spires; not only so, but its mortality has been increasing; and on the average of 7 years, even leaving out the terrible 1854, it presents a catalogue of deaths greater than that of Liverpool (the most unhealthy and over-crowded of English cities), in its most unhealthy epoch, before the days of sanitary reform; when 39,460 of its inhabitants lived in 7,892 cellars; when 55,534 fought against death in 1,982 courts, containing 10,692 houses, built back to back, one third of them closed at both ends, and at best provided with only a surface drainage, which might be called a fever-bed condensed.*

At that time the cellars were generally from 10 to 13 feet square,. sometimes less than 6 feet high; often with only bare earth for a floor; frequently with no window, and the ceiling on a level with the street. Generally there was no other drainage than a cess-pool under a board, which had to be ladled out; sometimes a cess-pool of putrid matter was allowed to incubate its fevers under a sleeping bed. Sometimes a back cellar was used as a sleeping room, with no light or air but what could enter through the front. Each house above contained two or more families, among which one woman complained that they were "rather crowded, since the people in the next corner took lodgers." The population was huddled together to an extent nearly three times the maximum CANADIAN NAT. VOL. VI. No. 3.

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But it is not fair to leave out the cholera year from the average. The same poisonous gases which yearly raise the mortality from 14 to 34 or even 38 per 1,000, occasionally concentrate their energies for the development of a cholera, a ship-fever or some other pestilence. Such visitations are often looked upon as "special providences;" but they are as natural and necessary results of culpable neglect in sanitary matters, as is delirium tremens of continued intoxication, or ship scurvy of unwholesome diet. The people of Montreal must continue to lodge such visitants so long as they make homes for them in putrid emanations; and they would be deprived of what is justly their own if these pestilences were excluded, as much as if the key were turned in their market of Bonsecours or in the parish church of Notre Dame. The fire did not add to the mortality of the city; it consumed the fever-beds as well as the dwellings, and drove the people into the shelter of the fresh air. But the cholera found a congenial atmosphere in the swamps of Griffintown; it not only devoured the yearly increase of the city, but killed off 463 persons over and above as many as were born that year; so that for each thousand of the 60,000 inhabitants of the city, sixty-two human beings perished. The grave that year hastily swallowed up 3,739 living souls. The worst recorded pestilence in England during the present generation was the Famine-Fever year of 1848, in Warrington. In that year one out of every 20 inhabitants died; in the Montreal Cholera of 1854, out of every fifteen citizens one was found dead! A widow said of the first visitation of the dreaded Asiatic pestilence in Bristol, that it was a "blessed cholera ;" and she spoke truly, for it was the cause of the Sanitary Reform movement, which has saved its myriads of lives and will save its millions more. The fever in Warrington led to the immediate cleansing of its filth; and its inhabitants are now yearly taxing themselves large sums for investment in the underground life insurance. The people of Montreal have to this day retained their unenviable distinction as the dwellers in the city of wealth and death; and even last year their Council not only refused to lay the dust of the city, but could not draw water enough from the mighty river to allow the inhabitants to do it at their own expense!

density of London, and consisted in great measure of the dirtiest and poorest of the Irish race. Such was Liverpool in 1841; and more unhealthy even than this has been Montreal from 1853 to the present time; although for five months in every year its laboratories of pestilence lie harmless in the safe prisons of the ice and snow !

Montreal was not the only city which was scourged by cholera. Vaudreuil and Lachine, in its immediate vicinity, shared the plague; but with how different results the following table wil show.

Several causes may be assigned for the frightful amount of mortality which the stern facts of the burial registers assign to the city of Montreal. The first of these is emigration. The emigrants are said to be a peculiarly unhealthy race of people, landed on the shore only in time to die. If that were the cause, we ought to find the mortality of Quebec greater than Montreal, as the poorest and most sickly are unable to proceed further; whereas Quebec only loses 25 to 34 who perish at Montreal. Moreover, the earlier years, when the emigrants were most numerous, were far more healthy than the later ones, when emigration has considerably slackened, and when those who arrive are much better cared for. The principal way in which the emigrants affect the returns is by increasing the population. This will probably lessen the average of later years; to what extent the coming census only can decide. It is the custom in each city to state loosely the supposed number of its inhabitants; I have not been able, however, to find any accurate returns beyond those given above. The tide of emigration affected Toronto fully as much as Montreal; yet its mortality is considerably less than half that of its older sister. As an offset to the increase of population, it may be necessary to say, that, in each year but one, several of the religious bodies sent in no returns (on the average, 6 each year). It is presumed, however, that the number of deaths thus unregistered is but small.