This text was obtained via automated optical character recognition.
It has not been edited and may therefore contain several errors.

---

* UUlbW
fsf
MOBILE HAS 1EAT MORTALITY AMONQ
NEGROES'FROM SMALL POX ~ FIGHT BETWEEN WHITES AND BLACKS DESCRIBED January 2*t, 1866
N.O. Daily Crescent - Friday, January 26, 1866 p *+ c 5
OUR MOBILE CORRESPONDENCE
Mobile, January 2b. 1866
Mr. Editor ?
Small Pox Deaths
Since the commencement of cold weather, the mortality among the negro population in and about Mobile has been very great. In addition to their sufferings from lack of food and shelter, the small pox broke out among them and has for some weeks past raged with a fury that threatened extermination should it continue to increase.
The amount of mortality reported by the civil and military sextons affords no satisfactory data to calculate the number of deaths. They report for the past week 13 deaths by the disease,
2	of which were of white perons; but these are only the cases or interment by them. If it were possible to ascertain the number trust into holes anywhere to get them out of the way, regardless of the Freedmen's Bureau, and the number that lie unburied in the fields and woods about the city, it would be seen that a small pox epidemic of unusual malignity prevails among the blacks.
There are many cases among the whites, but probably not more than 5% of the whole, and with them it assumes a decidedly milder type. A physician informed me that he has fully 100 cases but the proportion of whites he did not state.
A hospital for the treatment of the negroes attacked by this foul disease has been established somewhere down the Bay Road, and we learn that the "fast crabs,? who were in the habit of airing themselves on that pleasant drive are not at all in favor of the arrangement. I recommended one of them to remonstrate with the officer who controls the destinies of that philanthropic institution, but he shook his head doubtfully.
Fight Starts on Steamship
When the Frances was coming up the Bay the other afternoon, a row occurred between two of her deckhands?white and black?in which the latter was stretched upon the deck with a broken head. The other negroes took up the quarrel and threatened the white man's life, but the Mate ordered them aftx, and some person in the cabin supplied the white belligerent with a pistol, when he set the darkies at defiance.