15
The actual site on which the coolies were hutted was high and for the
most part bare rock. The water in the streams was very low, the pools being
almost stagnant, it was clear and free of weeds, but there can be no doubt that
it was habitually fouled by excremental matters. The personal condition of the
coolies was probably not very different from that of the village population, they
were more exposed to the heat of the sun and had harder work, but they were
better fed, and they had been in good health up to the date of the outbreak.
50. In the account given of the appearance of the disease subsequently
in other gangs there are many points worthy of remark, but first of all I would
call attention to the fact that although the gangs that were first attacked carried
their sick with them where they moved and many of them died by the way, yet
in no instance did a single case occur after a gang had moved from the ground 24
hours, and, moreover, although nearly the whole body eventually moved southward
towards C'hupparah, yet more than three weeks elapsed before any outbreak
occurred in that neighbourhood. South of Gunneshgunj cholera first appeared on
the 15th May in the gang at Rookeir 45 miles distant.
51. Neither does it appear that the disease was communicated from the
party on the Mooteyah nullah to the gangs about one and a half mile distant on
the northern bank of the Bijna. The Mooteyah was entirely deserted on the 25th
April and the gangs on the Bijna remained in health till 5th May. In the mean-
time the disease appeared in a body of local labourers living in the village of
Kuladehee in the Hoolkee valley, 30 miles north of Gunneshgunj. It was at first
reported that the disease had been imported into this locality by a villager,
one of those that deserted from the Mooteyah nullah, who had joined the gang at
Kuladehee, but I could discover no foundation for this report; in the first place
there is no evidence that these coolies had become infected, they were not working
with the Purdesees, they returned to their villages every night, and cholera did
not appear in any of the villages in that neighbourhood for weeks afterwards.
The mates whom 1 examined asserted that no one from elsewhere had joined
the gangs in the Hoolkee valley about that time, and that Gunneshmate of the
Kuladehee gang, who died on the hank of Terya nullah on the 29th April, was the
first person attacked. Their evidence on this point was confirmed by the Kotwal
and other inhabitants of Kuladehee and by the Head Constable at the Hoolkee
Police outpost to whom all deaths were reported. The choleraic influence, however,
was apparently present at Kuladehee a day or two earlier, for two young women of
the Dheemur caste that left Kuladehee on the morning of the 26th to go to
Mohogaon, a village near Lucknadown 24 miles distant, were seized with cholera
by the way. On arriving at their destination they sent to the dispensary at
Lucknadown for medicine, and both recovered.
52. In connection with the outbreak in the Hoolkee valley I will now
relate a circumstance that occurred at the village of Sookrie, 4 miles distant.
It was first reported to Dr. Hice, the Civil Surgeon of Jubbulpore, and I after-
wards gathered the particulars of the same story at the village. On the 20th
April a Brahmin with his wife and daughter, a girl 15 years of age, returning
to Nagpore from Benares, where he had been on pilgrimage, arrived at Sookrie
in a gharry and halted on the encamping ground; he stated that he had left
Mirzapore two days previously and had travelled to Jubbulpore by rail, that his
daughter had been attacked that morning when crossing the Nerbudda, he was
anxious to obtain medicine for his daughter and finding there was none to be
had at Sookrie he went on. Nothing could be traced of the party afterwards,
they were at Sookrie about an hour. Before they left a Gond woman belonging
to the village returned from the jungle with some grass, some of which she sold
to the Brahmin to place in the bottom of the gharry. Shortly after the party left,
the Gond woman was seized with purging and vomiting and died the next day;