Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1879-02-07
The PIaoue In AsIn and Eurnue.

Europe has hardly escaped from the
alarms Of war when a more formidable
enemy suddenly contronts her. The first
news of the advance of "the plague was
received on the 81 inst, when despatch
from Astrachan announced that il was rag
ing there with fatal fury. The awful
disease, which now threatens the European
continent with Wholesale death, was brought
back in the baggage of two Cossack Icgi-
ments on their return from the seat OF war
| in Asia Minor. A new Asiatic question Is
thus presented on which. for once, all the
powers, both great and small, are on one
side. Muscoyy, no longer yexing the soul of
the unspcakable Turk with threats of non
evacuation, concentrates her legiOns around
the plague spot in the hope of arrcstinS its
malarial march In the Italian chamber,
the government, replying to tho query of
deputy, said that it had established a rigOr-
Gus quarantine against the Black Sea, and
might have TO adopt even sterner measures.
Germany talks of sending 81, 900 troops to
dispute with death the passage of her
frontier. Aud so in every capital in Europe,
the same common concern j. exhibited in
the presence of common enemy. 1t may
not be an unwholesome thing, even If the
progress of the plague is arrested on the
farther shore of the Adriatic, to have the
nations of the Old World reminded thus
pointedlv that they form one family, and are
knit together, spite of their ambitions and
enmities, in the bonds of brotherhood that
they cannot wholly break if they would.
The Eurorean Governments are amply
justified in their energetic precautions, by
the records of previous visitations of the
plague. Its last appearance 10 Europe was
in 1914, though in Asia, its nursery and
home, it has REQUIRED frequently, in various
localities, since that date. Persia and Arabia
seem to be its most thriving seed-hedS- Of
its fearful fatality every historian speaks.
The great plague of 1925 swept from Asia
westwards, and devastated Egypt ard the
north coast of Africa, as well as the Byzan-
tine Empire, Italy and France. The city Of
Alexandria alone lost 500, 900 of her people
by that scourge, while the deaths in Con-
stantinople numbered 5000 per day for three
months, and the total number OF victims
gathered from tDe three cohtihthl1 II Sct
down at OO,000.000 Again in 1888, |
breaking out in China, where the his
torians Of the Celestial Empire say it swept |
away 100000 of its people, it again
marched west and visited every corner
of Europe 1t was then christened
The Black Death" and Boccaccio
in his "Decameron" wildly depicts It's
awful rayages in Florence. Italy was hall
In London the burials num-
bered 200 daily. A shocking feature OF this
pestilence was the inhuman prosecutions of
the Jews, to whose malign Influence it was
attributed, as well as all other ills under
which Christendom then groaned. Again
in l6ll, a quarter Of a million lives we're
forfeited to the plaque in Constantinople,
and in 1856, u vessel carried it to Naples,
and in six months 900 Of the Napoli-
tans had died from it. Even more awful
was the visitation of Marseilcs in lI2O.
when the scourgo was brought by a ship
from the Levant, and out Of 1000 inhabi-
tants two-thirds persisted in five short
weeks. There have been many subsequent
appearances Of the dreaded Death, the last
in England being that Of l66i-5, with which
Defoe has made every schoolboy familiar.
London lost nearly 10000 of its..popalation,
and it is believed that only by the great fire
IF l66G were the germs of the disease at
asst burned out.-BostOn Trdpeiier.