The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-04-19

densely-populated cities to be found along
the Route de Ia Revolte will wonder how
it is that cholera and typhus fever do not
spread from these rookeries to the city IN
the summer season, and ponder st the
same time over the result Of an outbreak
boast Of mud butts standing side by side
with tall houses, peopled more thickly
than any barracks. There Is want OF
water; the company has not Iald it
on to dwellings OF the poor,
and each one has to wait
his or her turn at the stand-pipe, put up
for the convenience of the street sweeper,
who win probably come and water the road
perhaps once In six months. The drainage
the rags and bones, the sugar refinery and
the manufactures along the banks Of the
Seine as far as st. Denis, are beyond de-
scription.
The visitor who has shaken the dust of
the Route de Ia Revolte of his feet and
come down to the midst of Paris. after
looking at the Rue de Venise, the narrow
alleys in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and
the maze OF streets lying between the Rue
that his pilgrimage is at an end. The error
is soon acknowledged by those who cross
the Seine and make their way towards the
GObelins quarter, where the tanners have
taken up their abode to avail themselves of
the fancied qualities for leather dressing
attributed to the waters Of Q little stream
called the Bievre.
The Place d'Italie, once described as the
most dangerous spot in Paris, has been
transformed into pretty square. smIl-
Ing garden standing out in strange con-
trast with the squalid misery to be met
with not more than hundred yards from
where the grass and evergreens are so
carefully tended by the gardeners of the
city OF Paris. Each year the hygienic
committee sends a deputation TO the Cite
Jeanne dare, which runs from the street
OF that name into the Rue Rationale, dis
lance under nifty yards. The report sent in
respecting the nnhealthiness of the houses
tenanted by the poor has formed the sub
ject OF more than one inquiry, but the au-
thorities appear TO hesitate before en-
croaching on the sacred privileges of the
pr0prietdires or landlords. There are over
1.500 families living in the Cite Jeanne
dare, some, or rather the majority of
them, occupying only one room; and
men, women and children are huddled to-
gether in the narrow, ill-ventilated space
until the survivors must give sigh of re-
lief when death claims another victim,
and the ambulance cart or the pauper's
hearSe comes TO carry off the weary soul,
glad perhaps to be anywhere out of the
world.
The hygienic committee has drawn up a
series of rules and prescriptions, giving in
structions for the benefit of those wretched
households, but nothing else has been done
as regards sanitation for the 1900 inhabi-
tants OF the cite.
The street, or rather roadway, leading to
the Cite Jeanne d Arc is disgrace to the
municipality of what NJ Victor Hugo has
termed 1.-THE capital of civilization" The
tall houses, built IN blocks, are divided by
Shiny mudpaths made up of rubbish, de-
cayed vegetable matter and stagnant water,
and putting to the blush the odor from the
ttan-pits bordering the Bievre. Disease
hangs threatening over the whole
again, and the doctor of the dead, +"
who has to certify as to the cause of
death, has busy task set him visiting the
corpses in all these hooks and corners.
Some of the rooms are barely twelve feet
square, and are occupied by the father. the
mother and four or flve children. When
one of the family dies the survivors have
with the body, Drawing infection until the
undertaken comes round. Men who have
looked on death until they have become
familiar with every phase of it cannot
help shuddering when they visit some of
the dens inhabited by the poor. A few
good Samaritans have taken up the cause
of the sick and suffering. They have pro-
vided themselves with a supply of money
and medical comforts and gone round to
ter we have recently experienced. In one
room visited, the eldest child, pretty girl
of Is. budding into womanhood, lay dead
on worn and moldy paillasse, or under
bed of straw, close to the corpse, was an
other child suffering with fever, parched
and delirious; third was playing in a
corner; while the mother was sucking
another little one. The father, thrown ont
of work by the failure of his employer. sat
on stool and wept silently as he told
those who questioned him that he had APP
piled in vain to the Assistance Publique
for some relief, and that he could not get
bread for his children nor provide fune-
raj for his daughter until inquiries had
been made as to his poverty. The culprit
who has just left Mazas or Poissy would
prefer his cell to one of the garrets in the
Cite Jeanne dare. which are let out at $50
per annum.
In another room visited, the father and
daughter, the latter about twelve, were
lying in the same bed, in the last stage OF
fever. Their faces were yellow and drawn
their tongues parched and blackened,
reminding one Of the victims of the plague.
They were being tended by the mother,
who was attempting to give her husband
some absinthe from q spoon, and who
that neither of the popular remedies,
absinthe and brandy, ought to be admin
istered in such cases. The doctor had been
sent for. he had paid the sufferers one OF
two visits, writing out prescriptions which
could not be made up for want of funds,
and the Sisters of Mercy, who had at
tempted to take the Cite Jeanne dare
under their special protection, were driven
away by the inhabitants, who regard the
church with suspicion since the re-
public has proclaimed the triumph of the
Voltairian era. Further on the wife had
been carried off to the hospital, and the
husband had been left to nurse the sick
child. Here and there in some of the
upper rooms were aged persons, men and
women, the disinherited of fortune, weary
of life, waiting patiently for death, almost
repelling the care and attentions of those
who tried to free them from the clutches
of the grim scythesman. One old woman,
who, tradition said, had seen better DAYS,
and occupied a brilliant position in society
under the restoration, was lying on a
mattress, unconscious of what was passing
around her. She had subsisted for years
by writing begging letters, and the secret
estate might have been learnt from the
bottle by her bedside, which smelt
strongly of cheap brandy.
In spite of the influences of civilization
on the one hand, and of parochlal officials
on the other, it would seem as if the taste
for living like savages were inextinguish-
able among certain classes of the popula-
ton, especially in large town like Paris.
A perfect set of barbarians will be found
in the Twentieth reimbursement or ward,
near the Eastern cemetery, at place
known as the Sentier des Partants. The
houses, if they can be so called, are seldom