34
Exemption of the
western coast from the
invasion of 1869.
51. It is a fact to be noted here that the tract of country from Bombay to
Cape Comorin, the western side of the ghauts, was not
subjected to epidemic invasion in full strength by the cholera
emanating from Bengal in 1868. It is true that a few deaths occurred in the
town of Bombay in October, November, and December of 1868, and that a few
isolated cases occurred in the Collectorates of Rutnagherry, North, and South
Canara, but it is quite clear that the germs of the epidemic were not present in
any force in the low-lying tracts of land below the ghauts. This will be apparent
in the following figures:—
Districts.
Rutnagherry
North Canara
South Canara
Malabar
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
Population.
6,81,147
3,61,013
8,36,019
18,49,671
Area in square
miles.
4,500
3,300
4,205
6,260
Cholera Deaths
in 1869.
218
*531
184
131
Remarks.
* 363 of these deaths occur-
red in the Soopa Talook
which is above the ghauts,
and adjoining Dharwar.
Non-invasion of Wes-
tern Coast districts
significant of deficient
strength in the invad-
ing cholera.
52. The exemption of the tract of country below the western ghauts is a fact
of some significance in the history of the cholera invasion of
1868. Having carefully examined the attainable data in
regard to two former invasions of this Presidency, in 1859
and 1864, I have been led to form an opinion that an exhibi-
tion of great strength of cholera in a year of new invasion on the sea-board
of the "Western Coast Districts bodes ill for the Carnatic, and Southern India
generally, while a minimum of cholera in those districts, during a year of
invasion, would seem to show that the great body of the advancing cholera wave
had been directed elsewhere, or had been lost before it reached Western India.
Should that prove to have been the case in 1869, then the cholera of the Madras
Presidency, now in the third year of its life, may be expected to lose its vitality
in the present year 1871 or early in 1872.
Whether it is that the contagium of cholera getting into the low moist tract
of the Western Coast Districts is hastened into activity by the peculiar clima-
tology of that region, so similar in many respects to Lower Bengal (the natural
home of cholera) it is impossible to say. It may be that an invading cholera
reaching that coast is reproduced in such strength, favoured by a climate natural
to it, as to form a new starting point of invasion. Whatever explanation may be
advanced, the fact remains that a cholera occupying the Western Coast area is
frequently reproduced in that area in the following year in enormous strength,
and invasion of the Mysore Plateau and Eastern Coast Districts is nearly
certain when the Western Districts are primarily invaded.
Geographical limit
of cholera in 1869.
53. Cholera then, in its southward course in the year 1869, was geographically
confined, so far as this Presidency was concerned, to the
country between the Eastern and Western Ghauts, and only to
the lower lying tracts of this region, and to the eastern sea-board, between the
10th and 15th degrees of North latitude. The great tract of Mysore table-land
was not invaded, but the epidemic advanced southward and eastward through
Kurnool, Bellary, Cuddapah, Nellore, North Arcot, and Madras Districts, to
South Arcot, Tanjore, and Trichinopoly, where the Cholera Report for 1869
shows it to have been active at the end of that year, still progressing and invading
the hitherto exempted tracts to the extreme south of Madura and Tinnevelly.