PLAGUE STORIES.

Waikato Independent, Volume VI, Issue 383, 8 June 1907, Page 6

PLAGUE STORIES.

India is still in the grip of the bubonic plague, and will continue so until the natives learn ways of wisdom. The • work of suppression is really little easier now than it was in the early days of the disease, though great progress has been ■ inade in the big cities. A correspondent of the Times recently described some of the difficulties with which the plague fighters had to contend when the epidcmic made its first appearance. He stationed at Balsar, a town of about inhabitants and about 100 miles Bombay, when it was discovered .that concealed plague had been raging for weeks. Every native, from educated Brahims downwards, was possessed with the belief that under every bed in the public hospital there was fixed a sugar press in which the body of the mtient was ground down into ointment'to be sent to Bombay for the treatment of , Europeans. No one would willingly pass along the street in which the buildm£ i° 0d f ° r fear of bein g captured.

« lhc Mussulmans, who formed a large part of the population, refused to vacate their houses, and, being an untractable lot, the Hindu officials were afraid of them. The town was a welter of disease ; and unrest, and disturbances were of daily occurrence. Ultimately a medical officer who had tact as well as courage took charge,, and the plague was stamped out. The correspondent relates , another experience, this time concerned with the decision to draw a cordon along .the Biver Main, so as to prevent plaguestricken people from entering the Kirau district. Very soon the rumour went abroad that- the British rule had come to an end south of the Mahi, and that the real purpose of the cord-on was to prevent the news from spreading northward. So implicitly was this believed that in one . village, a new reign was proclaimed by a religious fanatic whose followers de- ... strayed some Government property and shot down several policemen before they were dispersed.- Incidents such as these help QS to appreciate the strange complexity of the problems of Indian government. ■