SMALL-POX AT WANGANUI.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 469, 23 February 1869, Page 3

SMALL-POX AT WANGANUI.

The treatment of Francisco, the small-pox patient who died at Wanganui, is thus described by the Chronicle and anything more reprehenwble could not be imagined :—" It would have very amusing, if it had not involved elements of painful reflection, to have Been the way in which a small canoe *as knocked about the river on the evening of Tuesday last. Its passengers, or rather passenger, for only one remained steadily in the frail thing, while the others operated on land, was shipped at the bathing-house, arid the intention seemed to be to tow the canoe down the river, but, as the wind blew freshly to the right bank, it continually took the ground, and the tiny waves swept over it, gradually drenching the solitary passenger to whom we have referred, who lay at full length in its bottom. After a large expenditure of pushing and pulling, leaping out and getting into the canoe —a couple of hours being thus spent -%he towing process was given, up as a Uilure, and the canoe at length paddled bodily out on the river, with the determination of making land at Putiki. -Hie left bank was neared, when a

crowd of natives, yelling and shouting like maniacs, forbade the landing of the canoe on their shore. Driven from the land in this way, the canoe kept dodging about—now up, now down, one time coming to the wharf—until nightfall, when it was anchored on the right side about a mile and ahalf from town, the vicinity of the only house at thi§ part of the river bank being chosen for some reason which does not appear. It looks a curious escapade; the actual facts make it more so. Will our readers helieve that the canoe thus drifting about contained the small-pox patient, and that yesterday morning he lay in it, anchored as we have described, under a drenching rain. If the man lives he is more indebted to a strong constitution than to any care bestowed upon him by the authorities in Wanganui. The case is a peculiar one, and consequently very difficult to deal with, still the arrangements, or rather want of arrangements, were extremely loose and inefficient. The hired attendants got drunk. "We hope no evil consequences will follow. The patient was yesterday taken to the South Spit and put under a tent, with parties to wait upon him."