Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1879-02-05

HE PLAGUE IN ASIA AND EUEOPE.-
Europe has hardly escaped from the alarms
ui war when more formidable enemy
suddenly conlrOnts her. The first new :
The advance Ct" the plague" was received
on the 81 inst, when Il dispatch from
I Astrachan announced that il was raging
which now threatens the European CONT
nent with wholesome death, was brought
back IN The baggage of two Cossack rgi-
menls on their return from the seat OF war
IN Asia Minor, A new Asiatic qucsli N
IS thus presented on which, for once, all
ihe powers. both great and small are on
one side. MuscOvy. no longer veXing the
soul of the unspeakable Turk with threats
oil non-evacuatiUn. concentrates her legions
around the plague spot in the hope Of
arreSting its malarial march. In the Italian
chamber, the government. replying to the
query ola deputy, said that It had establish
ed rigorous quarantine against the Black
Sea, and might have to adopt even sterner
measures. Germany talks of sending
$4,000 troops TO dispH,e with death the
passage of her frontier. And SO in every
capital in Europe, the same common
concern is exhibited in the presence of u
common enemy. Ii may not be an I'M
wholesome 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 pointedly 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 European governments are amply
justified in their energetic precautions, by
the records of previous vistations of the
plague. Its last appearance in Europe
was in 1911, 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
sced-beds. OF its fearful fatality every
historian speaks. The great plague of
542-5 swept from Asia westwards, and
devastated Egypt and the north coast of
Africa, as well as the Byzantine Empire,
Italy and France. The city of Alexandria
alone lost 100000 Of her people by that
scourge, while the deaths in Constantinople
numbered 5000 per day for three months,
and the total number of victims gathered
| from the three continents is set down ut
lOO,OOO,000. Again in 1888, breaking out
in China, where the historians of the
Celestial Empire say it swept away 10 ,000,-
900 of its people, it again marched west
and visited every corner of Europe. 1t
was then christened 1.-The Black Death"
and Boccaccio in his "Decameronn wildly
depicts its awful ravagcs in Florence.
Italy was half depopulated. In London
the burials numbered 200 daily. A shock
ing feature Of this pestilence was the
inhuman prosecutions of the Jews, to
whose malign influence it was attributed,
rs well us other ills under which Christen-
dom then groaned. Again in 1911, n
quarter Of million lives were forfeited to
the plague in Constantinople, and 1906, Il
vessel carried it to Naples, and in six
months 100000 of the Napolitans had died
from it Even more awful was the vista
ton Of Marseilles in 1920, when the
scourge was brought by ship from the
Levant, and out of IS, 600 inhabitants two.
thirds persisted in five short weeks. There
have been many subsequent appearances
of the dreaded death, the last in England
being that of 1864 ), with which Defoe
has made every schoolboy familiar Lon
don lost nearly 10000 Of its population,
and it it is believed that only by the great
fire Of 1866 were the germs of the disease
at last burned out.-B9st0n Trareler,