The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-07-31

incredible In its consequences Yet if
Baku Is bad, what shall be said of entire
Noiga provinces like Astrakhan, where
the ever moving camps of Tartars carry
germs of disease from place to place with
out check or hindrance? 1t is true that
special efforts have been made by the
RUSSIAN government to prevent the cholera
from spreading in those districts. The
Mini Novgorod fair would form prolific
source of danger; its cosmopolitan at
tendance would carry incubation into
Europe and extend into the New World it.
self the ravages of pestiience. The Rus
sian minister of the interior has sent
medical officials to tour along the VoIga
and enforce to the utmost the powers with
which the autOcracy has invested them, to
the end that they may successfully Crap
pie with the pest fiend. A carefully pre-
pared and apparently complete set of in
structionS have been formulated and issued
from the ministry of the interior. ST.
Petersburg, of course, say the powers that
be, must be guarded at all hazards from
even the possibility of contagion.
Many drastic measures have been taken
along the Russo Persian and Afghan from
tiers and numerous fugitives have been
shot down and speared by Cossack cordons
In their attempts to cross over into Rus
sian soil. The orders under which these
guards were acting simply admitted of no
half measures. In the midst of such hor-
rors one turns with a certain sense of
relief to the reverse side of the medal; in
other words, to the humors of the situa-
tion. good story is thus being
told at Mew. OF Russian doctor
who was sent over the Afghan
frontier to an outpost north of Herat
to open negotiations with the local Sirdar
on the subject of the cholera Gordon. The
Muscovite physician was a large and
heavy man, and he was accompanied by a
Cossack escort. The Sirdar invited him to
Join his cortege, which was just starting
on tour OF inspection, and proposed that
they could thus obtain an opportunity for
arriving at an intelligent idea Of the gen.
eraI situation. The Sirdar's invariable
custom was to travel in company with his
three wives, and the first night the entire
company camped together amid some
ancient ruins for the purpose of enjoying
a much needed rest. Now it so happened
that the Russian doctor went to bed In an
unusually exalted state of mind conse-
quent upon too generous indulgence in
the hospitality of the Sirdar's table During
the night the watchful Afghan sentries
deserted a white object stealing stealthily
in the direction of the tent occupied
by the Sirdars wives. They ran toward
the mysterious object and cautiously
followed in its wake. They had not long
to wait before the figure, which was that
of a man, clad in scanty undergarments,
reached the ladies' tent and attempted TO
pass under it, much in the fashion OF the
small boy who seeks surrepttious view
of a circus show. The instant the ghostly
form betrayed its tell design sentry
jabbed it in the rear with his hooked spear,
when a sharp cry rang ont and the
wounded man rolled on his back. The
slight injury. however, that he had sus-
tanned was nothing 70 the disgrace of the
exposure for the cuiprit was none other
than the Russian medical officer himself.
The sentries would not allow him To go
back to his tent, but held him prisoner till
daybreak, and had it not been for
the interference of the Cossack es-
cort, peeping Tom would have Jared
badly. Next day the Sirdar held n
solemn court of inquiry and the doc
tor tried to explain the affair away by say
ing that he was chronic sufferer from
somnambulism. She Sirdar accepted the
explanation, but the negotiations came to
an abrupt ending, the doctor returning TO
his station across the Russian border.
Upon arriving there he would have sue