Epidemy

La Orotava, 1884 But in the autumn of the same year, a melancholy change came over this hitherto populous and prosperous little town. It was devastated by a pestilence. The yellow fever, which for the second time had been committing frightful havoc in Santa Cruz, unfortunately found its way to Port Orotava, carrying with it the sword of death, by which many were laid low during a period of no less than four months. On the first alarm, and previous to the establishment of sanitary cordons by the adjacent towns and villages, almost all the inhabitants who were able to do so fled from the town, and about eight hundred took refuge in the higher districts of the island, where the fever was never known to penetrate. But of the thousand, eight hundred, whom circumstances compelled to remain and brave the angel of death, seven hundred and thirty-one were carried off by the fever, and the voice of desolation and weeping only was heard in the streets of Orotava.

The effects of this disastrous visitation were felt for a considerable time. The prosperity of the town, and commercial spirit of its inhabitants, had received a check from which they did not speedily recover. However, in the course of time, the vestments of its mourning were shaken off; it began again to exhibit something like its former activity; its streets were once more active with commerce; and the inhabitants who had fled to the hills had all returned to resume their former occupations.

Elizabeth Murray, Sisteen years of an artist’s life in Morocco, Spain and the Canary Islands (1859)