67
however, in the latter end of May and beginning ot June the diffusion of the disease
became more rapid, it did not extend in any particular direction, or by a. gradu-
ally widening circle from the original focus, but we find it suddenly appearing
at distant points along the main lines of communication, the intervening tracts
of country for the time escaping. Thus, eastward from Seonee the epidemic
reached Hundía, 80 miles distant, by the 1st June; but it was not generally dif-
fused over the tract country intervening for several weeks. Over the country
eastward from Mundla the disease did not spread ; an isolated out-break, however,
occurred in this direction in a village 60 miles distant, whither the infection was
probably conveyed from Mundla. Northwards from Jubbulpore the disease
appeared at Sleemanabad, on the road, 40 miles; and at Moorwarra, 60 miles dis-
tant, in the first week of June; but very few villages in the immediate neigh-
bourhood of Jubbulpore were attacked till the following week. Instances occurred,
moreover, where outlying localities, shut off from frequent intercourse, though
eventually visited by cholera, remained free lorig after localities as far or further
removed from the original focus of the epidemic had been attacked. Thus, the
disease appeared in Moorwarra early in June, but the villages in a somewhat
isolated locality in the north-east corner of the Koombhi pergunnah, but within
the Moorwarra circle, were not visited till the end of July or August. The vil-
lages on the opposite banks of the Hirun are also instances of the same pheno-
menon.
236. No natural barriers proved obstacles to the spread of the epidemic;
it reached Nagpore from Seonee unimpeded by a belt of forest 40 miles in width.
Between Seonee and Mundla the intervening country is for many miles an
uninterrupted tract of hill and forest ; and westwards from Jubbulpore the Bhau-
ner and Khymore ranges of hills, rising almost perpendicularly from the plain to
the height of 1,000 or 1,500 feet, did not bar the passage of the epidemic. The
prevailing wind during the epidemic period was westerly and north-westerly.
In the Seonee district the direction of the spread of the epidemic was rather
easterly and north-easterly, but in the Jubbulpore district it was the reverse,—
tending more to the west and north-west.
237. The limited extent of the area over which the epidemic spread, com-
pared with the epidemics of former years, is no doubt in a great measure due to the
fact that the original focus was not, as in former years, an assemblage of pilgrims
gathered from all parts of the country, but a small body of men, of which the
main portion did not disperse; the subsequent diffusion of the disease being
chiefly effected by means of local traffic and the ordinary daily intercourse be-
tween village and village. Northward the epidemic did not extend beyond a
circle, of which Jubbulpore is the central point, to which all local traffic tends.
Southward it extended into Berar; but here it would appear that the influence
of pilgrimages came into operation,—the first out-break in Ellichpore being attri-
buted to the return of persons from the temple at Ramtek.
238. Many instances have been given in which an out-break of cholera
followed closely upon the arrival of persons suffering from the disease ; and it
may be remarked that these instances occur more frequently in the earlier part
of the epidemic, and among the scattered villages of Seonee and Mundla, than
later in the season, and in the more densely populated district of Jubbulpore,
Examples are also given of the extent to which the diffusion of the disease is
promoted by marriage processions,
239. The accounts given of the out-breaks of cholera at Kyra (para. 94),
at Soonwarra (para. 102), Gokulkara (para. 109), and Bhoodooa (para. 153), afford
evidence that the disease may be imported into a place by persons in whom no
symptoms of the disease are apparent; and in other instances, as at Sehora and
Rana (para. 82), the importation of the disease into one village wag so closely