Connecticut western news., 1884-11-26
DROUGHT AND DISEASE.
Terrible Suffering and Death Tn the AIOun- tain Counties of Virginia mud West Vir- uirnLu

Mir. Preston Abbott, who represents a New York house, returned from visit through the counties of Mercer and Me Dowell, West Virginia; Lee, Russell, Wise and Buchanan, Virginia, and Scott, Harland and Floyd, Kentucky. He says the scenes witnessed were beyond de- scription. For nearly three months nc rain had fallen. The grass was burned up. Leaves had fallen from whole for ests. Crops were a total failure. Nearly every creek, spring and we'll was dry. There was hardly any water in the north and middle forks of the Holston. Maid. en Spring Creek is simply dry gulch, and the Louisa fork of the Big Sandy is merely succession of brackish puddles in the hollow of its rocky bed. In the town of Mount Pleasant only one well contains water. The citizens of Saltville carry water nearly two miles.
 For the past six weeks a deadly plague has swept this whole region, and at least ], GOO persons, in a population of not to exceed 15, 900, have died. Cat tie and live stock by hundreds have died, and their rotting carcRsses fill the air with horrible stench. The disease is similar in man and best. It begins with gripping pains in the stomach, fol lowed by excessive fever, bloody Aux, accompanied with vomiting, then death. The sickness rarely lasts over day, but this depends on the strength of the in- dividual attacked. The country is ex- tremely rough, and most of the people live in cabins up the hollows of the mountains. Many of the families are remote from neighbors. Whole families die alone, and are left unburied. The devastation on Moccasin Greek is par ticularly awful. About thirty families live within distance of eight miles along its banks. Of the 18O persons in them over 100 have died. Physicians are not to be had, and the simple reme- dies of the natives prove powerless.
 MT. Abbott relates one very sad case. The family of Abraham Smalley, con- sisting Of five persons, the youngest a child of 2 years, were all found dead. The child had evidently died last, and in it's hunger had nearly torn off its mothers breast. Food is about exhaust ed, and the people are living on parks and herbs. Water is so scarce that in many instances the blood of dying ami mals is used to cook their food. Blood is also freely drunk. Flour Is unknown, and corn meal sells for SS and SI0 a bushel. The mills cannot grind, and if they could there is no corn. GIades- vile, Ky, is almost depopulated, and a graveyard is about all that remains of Lebanon.
 The immediate cause of the disease is supposed to be the presence of a great quantity of mineral matter in the water, caused by the long drought aud evapora- tion. Aid must speedily come from the outside or the one thousand deaths will reach five thousand. In five counties there are not one thousand bushels of corn nor one thousand head of live stock, and the tobacco crop Is an abso- lute failure, and potatoes do not average ten bushels to the acre. There is no game in the mountains, and communi- cation with the outside world is by the most tedious methods, over mountains and rocky passes. In the language of Abbott, the scourge of Marseilles pre- sented no more ghastly scenes. It is simply rain, and that speedily, or ami hilation.