rupt. Admiration of “every thing that is British” sometimes produced
humorous results. One activity stood out: the aristocratic sport of fox hunt-
ing. Unfortunately, Americans did not have the key ingredient, a suitable
fox. So sometime around 1680, they began to import foxes from England,
and the hunt was on.
Meanwhile in cities, streets were nearly impassable for pedestrians.
When dry, they were dust heaps that became dust storms in a breeze; in
times of rain “the wheels of heavy carriages plough’d them into a quagmire,
so that it is difficult to cross them.” Always, they were running sewers. The
stench in summertime was almost overpowering. Underground sewers
were eventually built in parts of Boston and New York in the eighteenth
century, but they were uncommon throughout the colonial period. Because
people dumped their garbage outside their doors, drains (if there were any)
were often clogged. Little progress was made with paving until the middle
of the eighteenth century. Such cleaning as was done was usually the work
of vultures or feral pigs. In Philadelphia, in one of his many services to
Americans, Benjamin Franklin began a project of street cleaning, paid for
by subscription of the residents.
To avoid the muck, wealthy people arranged to be carried in horse-
drawn light “chairs.” Sophisticated Massachusetts at mid-century boasted
twenty coaches and 1,200 one-horse “chaises.” Those who could afford it
let other men’s or animals’ feet trample the morass.
The morass was a breeding ground for all sorts of pests and pathogens.
Mosquitoes were considered just a nuisance, since their role in spreading
malaria was not understood. Some relief from malaria was gained by
another borrowing from native Americans, “Peruvian bark,” a tropical plant
of the madder family that yielded quinine. Then, shortly after 1722, experi-
ments began to be made in the colonies on another borrowing, this time
from the Ottoman Turks: an inoculation against smallpox. Although this
inoculation came from the Ottoman Empire, as I pointed out in chapter 6,
its main sponsor, the Reverend Cotton Mather of Boston, had actually
heard about it from a slave he owned. Onesimus, as this slave was called,
came from the Gold Coast and explained to Mather that it was common
there. Before being enslaved, “he had undergone an Operation, which had
given him something of the Small-Pox,& would forever praeserve him
The Growth of the Colonies 151