THE BLACK PLAGUE.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIX, Issue 3139, 27 August 1892, Page 6 (Supplement)

THE BLACK PLAGUE.

Between- 134 i and BUS the black plague j began its ravages in India, China and ' Taitary, appearing it: Persia, Kgypt and the Uoiy Land about two years later. Prior to the outbreak in question, in 133:', the hl-ick demon had claimed thousands of souls in Western Asia and Eastern Europe. It had either lain latent or had enthvlv died out before t.ho awful visitation of 1348. Between those two nates, 1333 and 13-18, however, great volcanic, eruptions occurred, and thousands of human lives wore lost: innumerable swarms of insects and countless millions of poisonous serpents invaded the East, the putrid exhalations of which seemed to contaminate every cubic foot, of the atmosphere. It is claimed by some of the old writers that, immense quantities of vermin, both hideous in appoaranco and huge in proportions, wero literally rained from the sky. At Mecca., the old chronicles s iv. it rained snakes, poisonous insects, blood, and masses'of quivering flesh for three consecutive days and nights without intermission. Streams became choked with the decavin.tr bodies cf millions of bushels of insects and twisted and lacera'cd bodies of decaying serpents. Animal i of all kinds which frequented the streams when in search of water died by thousauds from drinking the contaminated fluid, their bodies serving to make th* march of death and destruction more complete by sending up their foul, putrifying odors. THE WELLS POISONED. The poisonous waters sank into the ground and filtered through the walls of tho wells and other receptacles where the human species were wont, to quench their thirst. Soon the frightful consequences became noticeable ; the inhabitants were attacked by fearful raging fevers; later on there was no mistaking it, the black death itself appeared among them. At morning there would be no sign of death in a family ; before noon half, may be all, would be" down with burning fevers; great swellings under the arms or in tho groins had already made their appearance ■—the sure forerunner of the ailment Within another few hours tho tongue became black, the throat, respiratory organs, and other parts of the body began to°decay and send forth its poisonous, sickening smell while the poor victims wore still alive. The breath became foetid and pestiferous. Total or partial palsy of the body ensued, the patient raved ard rolled his eyes like a drunken man, often belching forth great mouthfuls of blackened, clotted blood during his

delirium. Some lived but a few hours), from five to seven, others two or three days, seldom longer, the majority dyiug within forty hours of the first attack. Within tbe three years of its ravages in China, 13,000,000 human beings died. Japan, India, and the remaining' countries of the Orient swelled the grand total to 37,000,000. After preying upon all the available material in the East, the awful pest took up its dread, silent march to the south and west. Asia Minor was ravaged. Italy and the islands of the Archipelago were all but wholly depopulated. The poisonous cloud of death was said to have been actually visible as it swooped down upon Italy. Mansfield'* " Chronicle in Syriac," Spangenberg, chapter 257, says : '' A dense and awful foe was seen in the heavens, rising in the east, and descending upon Italy." ITALY DEPOPULATED. Italy lost more than one-half of her entire population ; tbe islands of the Archipelago absolutely all, those who were left by the plague dying of starvation or through cannibalism. From Italy and the Mediterranean Islands the deadly vapor settled like a pall over Germany, France, and other countries to the west and north-west. In Germany the awful march of the ghastly spectre must have been truly inoescribab'.j. In every house, sometimes in every room, the reeking pestilence awaited its hideous, putrid burden. Mothers forsook their children and left them burning with that unslakable thirst which burned their very entrails as though they were in a furnace. Strong men sent to bring water to moisten the lips of one newly strickened returned not, hut were found were the . .' -i , _ji__-t j.i r\c

deadly pest had breathed upon them. Of Germany's meagre population at that time 1,244 434 were carried, away in the dreadful avalanche of death. The imagination cannot conceive the terrors of that dreadful time, language is not equal to the task of expressing the terror of the people, especially if it must flow from the pen and be taken from tho writer's limited vocabulary. In 1349, or, as some say, not until 1350, the Saxons were confronted by the hydraheaded horror which had leaped the narrow thread of water separating England fronr the mainland. London gave 100,000 from her population, which, the reader must remember, was only a fraction of what it is at present to fill the maw of the black glutton. Two millions is believed to be about the number that perished in the whole of England, A TEBRIBLE PICTURE. One historian, attempting to describe the situation in England, says : " People died bleeding at the nose and at tbe mouth, so that rivers ran red with blood, and streams of putrid gore issued from tho graves aud sepulchres of the dead. " Larse fields were used as burial places, where the dead were thrown into pits by hundreds. Imagine cart-loads of humau carnage dumped into one pit ! The driver of the cart would frequently have arrived only at the pit with his load of reeking dead, when he himself would drop stricken

with'the disease and be thrown in with the load he had hauled to this crowded sepulchre." It was a veritable carnival of death throughout the length and breadth of the known world.

Ships would he dashed upon the shores of lands not yet infected, with their ghastly cargoes of dead or dying sailors ; after which event no power on earth could stay the rapid spread of the poisonous exhalations throughout the lam.' which but a day or an hour before was boasting its immunity. Death seemed as busy on the sea as upon the land, only that there was not so many upon whom theinsatiate monster could glutitsappetite.

Shipload after shipload drifted upon the shores of the Mediterranean, the Black, the North, and other inland aoas, always filled with putrefying victims of the Black death. Histoiians account for the frequency of these occurrences by telling us that as soon as a maritime city would become stricken with tho pestilence the wealthy portion of the community would flee to the sea in ships loaded to the. gunwale with provisions and water ir, the vain hope of escaping the breath of death then being breathed upon their homes and friends. The folly of this undertaking is plainly illustrated in the accounts which

tell us that all these ships, sooner ot later, drifted ashore, withoutoaptainand without men—floating charnel houses.

RUSSIAN IMMUNITY. One remarkable fact in connection with this fourteenth-century plague visitation is the long immunity enjoyed by the Russian territories as mentioned in the foregoins, it first appearad in tho East— in India or China—about 1317. From India it. slowly dragged its slimy length through Persia to the eastern extremity of the Mediterranean Sea. From that point it'worked through Palestine to the south and west into Egypt; from Egypt south into the heart of Africa, where nothing except tradition is known of its ravages. Where the split occurred at the point of the Mediterranean it worked north and north-west through Asia Minor, but is said to have been introduced into Constantinople by way of tbe northern coast of tho Black Sea. Of course the northern coast of the Black Sea took it into Russian territory ; if this was really the fact, some influence or influences must have been at work mitigating its virulence. ANOTHER VISITATION. From 1666 the plague again visited continental Europe and England, but not with the tame virulence or duration as that which characterised its progress, and operation in the first great visitation from. 1348 to 1351.

The seventeenth-century visitation si-outs to liiivis wromtlit irru iri.r luivoo in London and in Knghum in general than t.iiv plac-. It. first. »ppnred in Holland in ICii'i, but riiil not reach England until

ibi.ut. ilie close of lGbt or thoopen nf lfiGS. [u Lo:ulon during June of tin: year last I in.'iitioiiO'lr, ."i*o 'lied of the plague : July mereased t!ir> number to 4,22"; August show.d over t'our times as miiriy lithe latter limires, 20,010 September was themost deadly month that London has seen since the awful days of i:i.",o, not, less than 2d,000 Londoners dying willi the putrid disease during that month. Tin- total footings show that 00,917 persons perished in London during the seven months endiny January 1 10GG. The great fire of London, September, 16, UiGG, is paid to have wholly freed the city of the plague. In ISGG G7 a disease much resembling the black plague appeared in .England. It was a very violent eoidemic, but thanks to modern sanity regulations, was soon brought under control. A .SWKKTiIKART'.S DEADLY GIFT. In January, IS7S, the black plague broke out in a small town on the Volga, Southern Russia. A soldier, returning from the war with the Turks, seeing' a beautiful silken shawl wrapped about the head of a dead Turk, on the field, removed it and wrapped it. in a gum coat, prepartory to carrying it to bis sweetheart in Russia. Wrapping it in the gum coat while in the open air seems to have saved the soldier and his companions. Howovcr, it only saved the man who found it lo:ig enough to let him die weeks later at his home on the Volga, and spread the black pest through, out the Volga district.' Tho shuwlbearer's friends had gathered at the home of his sweetheart to welcome h.'i ;'roai the wars with " the heathen Turk." Ho presented the shawl to the girl, and forthwith she tied it about her waist and danced around among the assembled friends, about 25 in number ; the next morninsr every man, woman, and child in the house was a corpse, their flesh as black as a negro's and covered with numerous pestilential boils. Within nine days tbe village, whiih, prior to the introduction of the deadly shawl, had coutrined 1,100 souls, was wholly depopulated by death. One thousand had died within, that short week and a half, tho few living stragglers escaped to the mountains, where most of them died. The Russian Government responded to the call for help and soon stamped out the embryo pestilence which had bidden fair to become as deadly as that of 1350 or 1605.