PBA Galleries

Autograph document, 12½x8", on a folded sheet, second leaf blank. With a second autograph document, being a Spanish translation of the first, 11¾x8¼" on a folded sheet, second leaf blank.

Serving as the U.S. Vice-Consul in Cuba writes in response to a letter from Don Mariano Ricafort, Captain General of the Island of Cuba, regarding the "precautions proper to be adopted to guard against the introduction of the Cholera Morbus". He further writes of the "little prospect which exists of making known to the remote sections of the country, as Portland for instance, by the first of August, the requisition which is necessary to screen them from rigorous quarantine; and my expectation that such cases, should any exist, will be exempted from the rigour of the general regulation." The cholera epidemic of 1832 claimed the lives of some 14,000 individuals in Cuba, including that of the U.S. Consul William Shaler.