The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1879-03-12
AN APPALLING PESTILENCE.
Northern Brazil Dovnstated-HorrlDie
scenes OF Diseaso and Dentn-fNo
Hundred Tkousand Persons Succunb'

Northern Brazil MISUNDERSTANDING
Scenes OF Disease md Dentn-fiSc
Hundred Thousand Persons sueeumb'
The Zulu war, the yellow fever vista
ton, the Indian famine, the distress
among English workingmcn, are intinl-
tesimal compared with the horrible
scenes of disease and death in Northern
Brazil. They are as trivial skin erup-
tions to the gangrene which has eaten
up Sertao, region as large as Franco.
The long account given to the New
York Herald by Rio Janeiro CORE.
spondent, tells an awful tale. Sertso Is
not a matted forest fiat, but rolling
country, sprinkled with woods. The
rainy season is from January to July,
not a drop Of water being attainable
at other times except by digging;
and when the whole year is dry
the most terrible suffering ensues.
The people are agricultural and pas.
toral. Not 100, 900 out of the 2,5OO, 600
inhabitants are otherwise than starving
" Door, and the majority are described
as degraded mass of mixed white,
black and Indian blood. The Sertao
averages 500 miles in width along tho
coast from the Parabypa river to the
San Francisco, and turns southward to
Minas Geraes. The black spot Of the
famine of 1878 was Ceara, an area
equal to the Middle States. Three wet
winters were succeeded by the drought
of 1878, The unthrifty and starving
population began to eat disease-breed'
ing roots. Crushing penances, pillage
and crime were inaugurated. Children
were left to die, and filthy carcasses Of
anima.s were greedily devoured. Peo.
pie crowded into the towns, dying right
and left by the way-and this was only
the beginning.
A cruel feature of this time was the
unrelenting exaction by creditors, and
nude girls begged on the pavements for
food, their bones straining their skin to
bursting. Lists of the dead could not
be made fast enough to keep pace with
the hccatombs OF famished bodies.
Women sold themselves for meal. The
defaulting cabinet of the Brazilian gov
ernment had left o debt Of $50, ,0OO, 900,
and private charity was soon exhaust
ed, In the most favorable time mans
living in Northern Brazil costs twenty
cents a day, and now, when provisions
were exorbitsntly dear, the utmost
money subscriptions did not average one
dollar per year for each man. Smallpox,
yellow fever, beri.beri "a local paralytic
disease), and new sorts of wasting fevers
became epidemic. Cries, groans, shrieks,
curses, mingled with the sickening odor
of decaying bodies, for tho living could
not bury the dead fast enough.
One hundred aud fifty thousand peo-
ple fell dead in March, in Ceara, as they
hurried over the stones with bleeding
feet. A father killed, cooked and ate
his own child, and cannibalism became
common. Grain was locked in maga-
zines by the authorities, until q sudden
distribution OF money and plenteous
food bred new diseases. The wretcheo
were shipped to other places like cattle,
died like vermin and were thrown into
the sea. The government neglected its
grand opportunity to put the people Of
Oeara under military surveillance and to
civilize them. A second dry season
came, and although food was now plenty;
disease was unchecked, and deaths con-
tinued to increase in number per diem.
Twenty thousand corpse, filthy masses
of sores, lay emitting horrible stencil
beneath few feet Of gravelly soil
Those who dug the trenches were often
asphy1iated. Whole families 10y dying
and dead together, and the terrible
scene was like one which George Eliot
describes in "Romolu." At Pscatuba,
with $500 population, the deathrate
was 12O day. The 10 8 in population
has been over 500, ,000-si1ty per cent.
and a new plague, called the "black
smallpox" threatens to renew these
horrors.
It seems that tue devastation might
have been stayed by vaccination, by dis
Greet feeding under military direction,
by cleaning and burning contaminated
huts and bedding, and by decent burial.
But the government was criminally re.
miss in it's duty. All the good done en-
anated from few courageous and gen
erous men. We have no reason to think
that the narrative of these facts, the de-
tails of which are sickening, is at all e1-
ageerated. A more horrible combina-
ton OF all the miseries of famine and
pestilence is not recorded in history,
and the plaques Of Athens and OF Lon
don scarcely deserve mention beside this
one. And yet the world was ignorant
of sll this, and the ignorant and willful
negligence of the government OF Brazil
seems to have afforded every means for
the spread and fatality Of the pestilen.
tial famine, while opening no way for
-, oorrootion