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Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 661, 27 March 1879, Page 2

The fact that a Plague, carrying death to thousands, is raging throughout Russia, has caused terrible alarm in England, and the most energetic measures are being adopted to prevent it reaching to Home shores. Now it is learned that the disease has extended to South America, which is many thousands of miles distant from the seat of the Plague in Russia. (Such- being the dread case, it is hard to say where will be the termination of its boundai'ies. That this terrible epidemic is infectious, is pronounced to be so by a commission of physicians, who were appointed by the English Government to enquire into the nature and character of the disease. The commissioners have pronounced the form of Plague to be at once infectious and ; contagious. t It : may be communicated by contact, by the breath, by clothing, or by anything used or handled by sufferers. In addition to this, .frightful and immediately fatal 'malady, typhus fever in its most malignant form has broken out in France. In one cantonment, several hundred soldiers were carried off by it. Should . these two evils extend to Europe they will probably destroy more lives than the most bloody war that could be engaged in. The New Zealander, making reference to the same subject, says, there 'are very few, if any, vessels trading between Brazil and New Zealand, but that stray arrivals from that country should be specially looked for, and most rigidly quarantined. We have no doubt but what the authorities will be on the alert. Extra precaution can do no harm. The few must on such a necessity suffer for the many. , A ship finding its way to 'any New Zealand port, coming from the feverstricken or plague-infected countries, must be provisioned, if necessary, and sent away without a soul being allowed to land, or the vessel to lay in ' quarantine. Whilst the . General Government has its duties to fulfil, it must not be forgotten the local authbrites have theirs; and that a ship from an infected country must not be allowed to lay off any port of our coast line longer than is necessary to obtain authority through the wire; to order that it stand out to sea ' L in> mediately!