TERRIBLE CHOLERA PLAGUE IN SOUTH AMERICA. Dying Men Burled.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 204, 21 May 1887, Page 3 (Supplement)

TERRIBLE CHOLERA PLAGUE IN SOUTH AMERICA. Dying Men Burled.

The "Pall Mall Gazette" publishes the following letter from Las Penas, in the province of Cordova, in the Argentine Republic :—: — I'll just give you a small sketch of the " microbe " that is fast thinning us out here— cholera. In Rosario it has nearly disappeared, but in Canada de Gouress, where, yuo will remember, I used to be, the Italians especially are having a iine time of it. They die in heaps, and are chucked into an immense pit or are buried by their relations under a mound of earth in the middle of a wheat field. Their goods and chattels are then thrown in a heap and burned— that is to say, what the soldiers don't pocket. In Mendoza and Tucuman, two places that used to be thickly-populated cities, che scourge has been so terrible that few have returned to tell thp tale. Some days in the centre of the latter place as many as 250 died a day, to say nothing of the outskirts of the town. In Monte Video they do not wait for the people to die, but cai-t them off as soon as they get sick. The papers say that the dead carts pass through the streets with dead and dying all mixed up. The scenes in the hospitals are, or rather have been, something too terrible to describe. A regiment of artillery (which means to say in this country the scum of the earth, such as assassins and cattle stealers condemned to the ranks for life or for a term of years) has been nearly cleared out in Rio Cuarto. The band of music, I hear, has completely been blotted out. I cannot describe to you the terror that has prevailed here. Seveial of my acquaintances are gone, poor fellows — one died in throe hours ! Some cases have occurred where the subject has nearly dropped down dead in the street. The authorities have fought pluckily against this fearful pestilence. A brother of a friend of mine was assassinated a few days ago in Tucuman by an infuriated mob, who in the panic believed that the filtered water was sent to poison them. 1 was in Rosario a few dayp ago, taking down McKenzie, who has been seriously ill, and happened to hear the story from this poor beggar's own lips. McKenzie is in Rosario, waiting to recover his health to go home. We are passing t* rough an awful crisis. The drought here is so terrible that a glass of water is being sold for five cents — about ■ 2£d. The cattlo are charging the fences madly, and I daren't even keep them back. One of the streams that crosses the Eyfcancia, and also provides the water of nearly 1,000 people, has dried up. What with the drought, cholera, and the fearful hailstorm, in which we lost about 1,000 cattle, you can imagine the state we are in. The drought up to c present is said to have saved us heref &m cholera, so perhaps we ought to be tb kfuL The heat is past all description. Imagine, the horses and cattle in Mendoza have also died of cholera. They have barred the passes to Chili, and so every one is out of work there, ami unable to gen a thing.