under the influence of the pestilence: "the first | the month of January, 1819, first attacking the feeling of dismay, the reflux of levity; the agi- coast immediately opposite that part of India tation and bustle at the commencement, and where it was raging most violently. Thence it the immediately following unconcern to all that passed directly to Colombo, from which point is going on; the mild workings of charity; the it spread over the entire island. The frigate cautious, guarded intercourse with others main- Topaze left Ceylon for Port Louis, in the Mautained by selfishness; the active energies of the ritius, arriving at her destination on the 29th good, and the heartless indifference of the bad." of October, 1819. During the voyage cholera The Europeans made formidable preparations broke out, and proved terribly destructive to the to combat the disease. Some kept caldrons of crew, but the sick were all convalescent at the water perpetually simmering, in order that they time of the arrival of the frigate at Port Louis. might have a warm bath ready in case of sud- Nevertheless, in three weeks after her convalesden emergency. Some put themselves upon a cent were landed, cholera attacked the inhabrestricted diet; others endeavored to fortify itants of the port, and rapidly spread over the their constitutions against the dreaded malady island. The mortality is stated at 20,000 by an by potations of more than ordinary depth. One eye-witness of the epidemic, but the Governor had notes written and addressed to every med-sets it down at only 7000. The latter estimate ical man within reach, announcing his sud- is sufficiently frightful, as it amounts to nearly den seizure and imploring immediate assist- one-twelfth of the entire population of the colance. These were kept lying on his desk to ony. be sent off upon the first real or imaginary symptoms of cholera.

The natives, on the other hand, attempted to ward it off by superstitious preventives. They resorted to incantations and charms. At the old head-quarters of the Bombay Deccan division the disease was ushered in by a very singular circumstance of this kind. A woman, frantic with real or assumed madness, or intoxicated with drugs, rushed through the main street, proclaiming herself an Avatar of the fiend of pestilence. She was nearly naked, and her body, her face, her scanty apparel, and her long disheveled hair were all daubed with the dingy red and yellow powders of Hindoo mourning. In one hand she held a drawn sword, to typify destruction; in the other a vessel containing fire, to denote the funeral pile. Before her went a band of musicians, clashing out the discordant noises with which the Hindoos accompany their religious ceremonies. She was followed by a large train of empty carts, having pressed into her service all she met. She denounced destruction upon all who did not acknowledge her divinity, and pointing to the carts, declared that they were to bear away the bodies of those who persisted in their infidelity. This visit created such alarm that the officers on duty, hearing of the affair, sent and had the woman arrested. While under restraint she was attacked with the disease, but yet managed to escape and was never heard of afterward.

The Isle of Bourbon, a French colony, is in the same archipelago with the Mauritius, the distance between the two being about forty leagues. As soon as the existence of the disease in the English colony became known to the authorities of the French island, the Governor of the latter established the most rigorous quarantine regulations. In spite, however, of all his precautions, a smuggling vessel named the PicVar, which sailed on the 7th of January, 1820, from the Mauritius, managed to elude the vigilance of the French officials, and to land a cargo of slaves near the town of St. Denis, in the Isle of Bourbon. On the 14th of the same month eight slaves perished in that town, and the inhabitants began to leave. The Governor at once established a lazaretto for the reception of the sick, and threw a double military cordon around the place, to prevent communication with the interior of the country. The disease did not spread; only 256 cases occurred, and the island, though more populous than the Mauritius, lost in all but 178 of its inhabitants.

We now return to the delta of the Ganges, to trace its northward and eastward march from that cradle of pestilence. In 1819 it reached the kingdom of Arracan, whence it gradually extended along the coast to the peninsula of Malacca. It raged in Siam in 1820. At Bankok, the capital of that country, its ravages were frightful. Forty thousand of the population perished. It was impossible for the living to bury the dead, and they resorted to the dreadful expedient of exposing the corpses in open sheds, and even in the rooms in which they died, in order that the vultures might enter and devour the dishonored remains. The King made a great religious ceremony to propitiate the malignant divinities who were slaughtering the people. The priests being consulted, gave it as their opinion that an evil spirit, in the form of a fish, had visited the river, and sent out thence the malignant influence under which so many were perishing. By their advice, great After having ravaged India it crossed to Cey-numbers of people collected on the banks of the lon, in which island it made its appearance in Meinam, where they fired guns and crackers,

By the second week in September, 1818, it had reached Bombay, having been just a year in crossing the peninsula of India. Its travel, however, was not limited to one direction. While it was advancing northward from Jessore, and westward from Calcutta, it was also passing southward along the Coromandel coast, and by October, 1818, one month after its appearance in Bombay, it had attacked Madras. Thus it traversed the whole peninsula, a surface of 66,000 square leagues, in a year.

beat gongs, and howled all night long, in order to scare away the demon. Some even dived into the water with swords and knives to drive him off. They did not discover the futility of their efforts till the next morning, when seven thousand dead bodies were found in and about the river.

the place had disappeared, and in the surrounding country one-third of the population are said to have fallen before it. It ascended the Tigris to Bagdad, where it was very destructive. The Persian army which was marching against that city was attacked, and compelled to withdraw, but the pestilence pursued them, and slew their commander. From Bagdad it crossed over to the Euphrates, ascended that river, and invaded Syria, following the caravans, and passing into Palestine. The two distinct routes by which it traveled become very evident to those who study its progress with the map before them-one leading from Bassora in a roundabout way to the Mediterranean, the other passing directly through the centre of Persia to the Caspian.

From Siam it passed southward into Sumatra and Java, and northward into China. At Samarang there were 23,000 deaths in two months, and the Dutch estimated the entire loss of life in Java at 400,000. Canton was attacked in the autumn of 1820, and the disease crossed thence into the Philippine islands. At Manilla, the priests persuaded the people that the foreigners had introduced it, whereupon the ignorant and superstitious multitude massacred over Astrachan, on the northern shore of the Casthirty Europeans, besides a number of Chinese. pian, at the mouth of the Volga, was first atIn 1823 the mortality at Pekin and Nankin was tacked in 1823. The disease, however, was not so great that the government was compelled to violent, not more than one hundred and fortyappropriate money from the public treasury to four having died. The Russian government bury the dead. By 1827 it had crossed the adopted preventive measures to check its northgreat wall and the desert of Cobi, and was in-ward progress. Whether these had any effect vading the inhospitable plains of Siberia. When it is not now easy to determine; but one thing we add that it followed the British army into Burmah, in 1823, and that it repeated its visits to Java and other islands and countries in Eastern Asia, we have completed our sketch of the progress of cholera in this direction. Its westward march remains to be described.

is certain, the pestilence advanced no further, and seemed to die out. Russia escaped till 1828, at the close of which year the disease attacked Orenburg, brought, it is said, by caravans from Northern Asia. It will be remembered that we left its eastern detachment on the way to Siberia in 1827.

Cold weather appears to exert a more decided influence in checking this disease in the warm regions of the East than in the cooler climates of Europe. It lay nearly dormant about Orenburg in the winter, but in the spring of 1829 it raged with great severity in that town and its vicinity, invading several of the military posts. On the last day of July, 1830, it again

In March, 1821, it paid a second visit to Bombay. Between this city and the islands and ports of the Persian Gulf there existed a considerable commerce, employing one hundred vessels and a thousand sailors. Besides these, there were numerous craft which touched at Muscat, on their way out to more distant lands. Between May and August various islands in the Persian Gulf had been attacked. From these points it spread through both Arabia and Per-attacked Astrachan, and this time it was very sia. In the former country Muscat was first at- violent. Out of a population of thirty thousand, tacked. This happened in July, 1821. In ten four thousand and forty-three died in four weeks. days the disease had destroyed ten thousand In the province of which this is the capital, the lives. The bodies of the dead were towed far mortality was twenty-one thousand six hundred out to sea and sunk. About the same time it and twenty-eight. It ascended the Volga, atentered Persia, at Bushire, the principal market taking the towns along the banks of that river. for the productions of Persia and of British In- In Saratoff it broke out on the 6th of August, dia. It followed the great thoroughfare to making its first appearance in three persons who Shiraz, in the neighborhood of which forty had just arrived from Astrachan. A clergyman thousand perished, sixteen thousand falling vic- of the Greek Church stationed in Saratoff has left tims to the pestilence in the first few days of its us so touching a history of the prevalence of the prevalence. The caravans traveling between pestilence there, that we can not refrain from the coast and the countries bordering the Cas- quoting a few passages: pian usually take Ispahan on their route. On this occasion passage was denied through Ispahan, and the caravans took the route through Yezd. Ispahan escaped for some time, but Yezd was almost immediately atacked, and lost seven thousand.

Bassora, a port at the head of the Persian Gulf, is the great market for Asiatic produce destined for the Ottoman empire. Cholera attacked it about the same time that it invaded Bushire and Muscat. Its work was completed in a fortnight, at the end of which time eighteen thousand out of the sixty thousand inhabitants of

"In the very commencement of the epidemic all our four surgeons were seized with it; two died on their journey to Zaritzin, and one here. From this moment fear and anguish took possession of the public mind. They who could flee from the city, fled; and as the malady was not considered contagious, servants, laborers, Tartars and Russians, were permitted to rush into the country. My congregation, which consisted of five hundred and fifty individuals, was reduced to one hundred and fifty. Many of the fugitives died on the road, and spread the malady whithersoever they went.

"From the 10th of August the malady increased in virulence; the daily mortality of four rose to five, twelve, twenty, eighty, one hundred and twenty, two hundred, and one day to two hundred and sixty, and decreased in the same gradual mode. Up to the 30th of August two thousand one hundred and seventy persons died. While all around was infected, Sarepta (a colony of Moravians), in which the quarantine regulations were most strict, escaped, and yet this disease is not called contagious.

"15th. Last night I was called to many sick, all of whom died in less than twenty-four hours. At six this evening I saw Mr. who was, to all appearance, in health. At ten he was attacked; surgeons were sent for, but none could be found, for all were ill. At length a medical pupil came, who did not think it necessary to bleed him. The patient became colder and colder. At four in the morning I administered to him the sacrament for the dying. At nine I visited him again. He was calm, cheerful, and resigned, and pressed me feebly, yet affectionately, with his ice-cold hands. At eleven o'clock he was a corpse.

"On the 17th many begged me to administer the sacrament in the church. I did so, and hundreds came and were comforted. One who could not be present in the morning, as his children were attacked with the disease, came to me in the evening, feeling that he was infected. The malady broke out in him at the very moment I began to administer the sacrament, and caused the deepest trouble of conscience. It was long before I could succeed in calming him."

"Up to the 11th of August none of my congregation had been attacked. On the 10th of August, the Sunday after Trinity, I preached from the text, 'And he looked on the city and wept;' and we wept, too, in the midst of our desolation and anguish, for our children and ourselves. I comforted my flock, and exhorted them to trust in their God, as I read to them from the ninety-first Psalm, 'He shall deliver thee from the noisome pestilence; thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my Cholera ascended the Volga to Kazan and refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation, Novogorod. In the neighborhood of the latter there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any town the peasantry suspected the physicians of plague come nigh thy dwelling.' I thus en- poisoning their patients, and in a paroxysm of deavored to drive off dejection, and to substi- fury massacred thirty of the unhappy doctors. tute resignation: many were strengthened. I On the 26th of September the pestilence reachfelt for hours the peril, but I felt no less the ed Moscow. The city was immediately divided sanctity of my duties; and my whole soul pray-into forty-seven districts, separated from one aned within me as I sighed, 'Preserve me, O Lord, for my flock's sake, and for my own; nevertheless, without murmur, do I offer up my life for thy service. Help me, O Lord, and strengthen me.' On the 11th of August I was called to our old sexton. Immediately afterward I was sent for to a young woman. I did all that my duties enjoined, but she died. Others soon followed her-all dying in twelve or twenty-four hours. They had the usual symptoms, with dreadful cramps. The hands and feet were cold and blue, cold sweat flowed in streams, and the pressure of death was felt upon their chests. The thirst was intolerable, and caused insufferable agony in the mouth and throat.

"13th August. I was called to four persons, who all but one took the sacrament, and died. Some of these I visited at night, and as I passed through the poorer streets, I could scarcely step without being made aware I was near a cholera patient. It was with great effort I could master my nature sufficiently to enter into these abodes of misery. I found the wife lying on straw and the husband on hay, near her, both affected. I felt sick as I held the sacramental vessels in my hands, and found myself in the midst of death and pestilence. Latterly I became more hardened and courageous.

"14th. To-day I blessed four corpses in their houses, and, having time, I accompanied them to their graves. As we journeyed, we were met by sixty funerals.

other by a cordon sanitaire; ten temporary hospitals were erected, and the minister of the interi or was appointed to superintend these arrangements. The Emperor visited the place when the disease was at its height, and when he left he submitted to the usual quarantine of eight days. During the first ten days of October the mortality was 747; during the second ten, 958; and during the last third of the month, 1284 perished. In this city, for the first time, cholera defied the power of winter, and carried on its work of destruction, unchecked by the frost and snow which conquered Napoleon.

At this time a body of Russian troops marched from the province of Koursk against the Polish patriots. They passed through Podolia and Volhynia, and carrying cholera with them, scattered it all along their line of march. On ̧ the 14th of March, 1831, it entered Warsaw, attacking both the city and the camp. St. Petersburg was not attacked till late in June. The same scenes of folly and cruelty which disgraced Novogorod were enacted in the capital of Russia. The hospitals, though guarded, were broken open by the infuriated rabble, who dragged out their dying friends and murdered the physicians and nurses. Nicholas, who was absent from the capital, heard of the riot, and with his accustomed intrepidity hastened to the spot. He rebuked them for their madness, and told them that it was far better to beseech the Almighty to dispel the pestilence which was ravaging all classes, than to engage in wicked and

unnecessary hostilities against their brethren. era made its appearance. On the 10th of June "My children," he added, “let us pray." So saying, he knelt down, and in the clear voice which had so often been heard at the head of his army, the Emperor offered up an earnest prayer for himself and the millions whom he ruled. The people were completely overcome. They fell upon their faces, accompanied their beloved father's petitions with tears, cries, and supplications, and rising up, went quietly home. While thus advancing westward, the epidemic also passed southward from the Caspian, ravaging the Levant, invading Arabia, and attacking the pilgrims at Mecca with great fury. Forty-five thousand of these zealots are said to have perished. It entered Egypt, raged terribly in Cairo, ascended the Nile, and passed beyond the reach of civilized inquiry into the wilds of Africa.

ton arrived in New Orleans, having left Havre a few days before the New York. As in the former vessel, a disease broke out at sea, and sixteen or seventeen deaths occurred, which were attributed to dysentery. On the 12th, however, a woman from on board was sent to the Charity Hospital, and was ascertained to have undoubted cholera. In a few days the disease was epidemic in New Orleans. It prevailed for eight months, and carried off 3500 souls.

in India, and burst with fearful violence upon a detachment of 6380 men of the British army at Kurrachee, who were, as usual, accompanied by a great crowd of camp followers. On Sunday, the 14th of June, the atmosphere was unusually stagnant and oppressive, so that, to use the strong language of an eye-witness, "the very heavens seemed drawn down upon our shoulders." A dark cloud is said to have hastened up the heavens, and a sudden gust of wind to have shaken the barracks and tents; but it soon passed over, leaving the air as still as before. At the same hour the pestilence began. Before midnight nine soldiers were dead, and the hospital was besieged by more applicants than it could well accommodate. In the morning it was ascertained that the disease was spreading over the town, and that fifty had died during the night. The usual haste was manifested in the interments. Pits were dug, morning and evening, in the church-yard; the dead sewed up in their bedding, laid side by side, and one service read over all. In twelve days all was over, and when the dead were counted, it was found that 900 Europeans, 600 native soldiers, and 7000 camp followers and townspeople had per-phis, in Tennessee, built upon a bluff overlookished. It was at first thought that this was an isolated attack, but further researches have shown that it was a part of the general epidemic. Cholera had again begun to march.

From this great entrepôt of the Southwest the epidemic spread in all directions. Almost every sailing-vessel, steamer, or flat-boat which left the city had cases on board. On some of the steamboats going up the river there were twenty or thirty cases and many deaths, and thus persons affected with cholera and dying in its grasp were carried to all the landings, towns, and cities as high up as Cincinnati. The first points which suffered were the plantations upon the Mississippi and Red rivers, along the banks of which streams it spread with unusual rapidity, bearing terror and death to every settlement on its route.

On the 22d of December it reached Mem

ing the Mississippi, about 900 miles above the Gulf of Mexico. The first sufferer was a boy who sold fruit to the sick of the steamboat Convoy, which arrived on the 20th, with cholera on On this occasion, however, it moved more board, from New Orleans. The flat-boat peorapidly than upon its first invasion. By May, ple were the next to be attacked. This popu1847, it had reached Tiflis; on the 21st of June lation amounted, at that time, to about a thouit was in Astrachan. Thence it marched up the sand, many boats having stopped at Memphis Volga, at the rate of 338 miles a month, reach-on account of the dread of the pestilence below. ing Saratoff on the 25th of August. It is a re- Communication between these people and the markable fact that Sarepta again escaped. Fol- steamboat-landing is denied, and the disease is lowing, as before, the main lines of communica- said to have broken out at once upon several tion, whether roads or navigable rivers, it at- different boats. With various lulls and exacertacked Moscow in September. Here it paused bations, the cholera lasted till the middle of a while, and then resumed its westward march, July, 1849, during which time it destroyed 290 reaching St. Petersburg in June, and Berlin in of the inhabitants. August, 1848. The loss of life in Russia is estimated variously at from 117,000 to 800,000. It reached London late in September, the first well-authenticated case of it occurring in the person of a sailor, just arrived from Hamburg, where the disease was prevailing. In Great Britain it, together with the prevailing diarrhea, which is considered by the author of the Registrar General's Report a masked cholera, destroyed 72,180 lives, and it is estimated that the mere list of the names and residences of the victims would occupy an octavo volume of 2500 pages.

On the 1st of December the packet-ship New York arrived at the Quarantine on Staten Island from Havre, with cholera on board, the disease having broken out at sea. The sick were sent to the hospital, and the well to some large public stores. Several cases occurred among those who were in communication with the emigrants; but on the island it did not extend beyond the Quarantine inclosure. In the city of New York three deaths occurred. On the 11th of December the emigrant-ship SwanVOL. XIII.-No. 75.-A A

On the 5th of January the first ease occurred at St. Louis, and proved fatal. It appeared to arise from imprudence in diet. From that time till March, only sixty-seven cases occurred, and they were so scattering, and so many of them came up the river from New Orleans and other infected places, that it was thought probable the disease would not become epidemic. In April, however, the number of cases increased considerably, and the returns assigned a mortality of 131 to cholera, 456 being the gross amount of the bills. In May there was a marked increase in the number of cases, and during the months of June and July the epidemic was at its height. On the 28th of June there were 123 deaths from cholera alone. After this, the disease abated a little till the 10th of July, when 145 persons died of the prevailing epidemic. In August there was a very great decline, only sixty-two deaths from this affection occurring during the entire month. and from that to the close of the year the cases were few. The mortality from cholera was 4557, from all other diseases, 4046, making a total of