The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1897-06-22
Picture of the Plague.
(From St. James Gazette. J

This morning we numbered the dead.
A pall of heat hung over the land so
sitting and choking that it made the
brain throb in agony. We went down
long, top-heavy, high housed lane. Every
door was locked, every easement fastened.
The inhabitants were all dead or had
fed. Four coolies came slithering their
thin shanks through the dust shouting.
MAKE wayl make wayl'' On their
shoulders rested pole and from it swung
an ambulance. There was another vic
tim
Round the corner we found mass of
smouldering rubbish in the roadway,
emitting horrible, sickening fumes.
Three Hindus dragged bedding and mat
ting from rickety shanty, threw it upon
the fire, and famed it to flames. They
were destroying all the goods of dead
family. Down the street house after
house bore the big red circle on it's por-
tails, telling that death had been hungry
there. We knocked at one door There
was no answer. We knocked again. A
wretched old man, narrow chested, with
his bony shoulders bent and protruding,
his fingers long and skinny, his face
wrinkled, his eyes shifty with fright,
came and looked through the lattice
"OpenI" "Why, sahibs; why, sahibs,
should I open?' ''You have sickness
here" The old man trembled. 'sNo,
sahibs, there is no sickness here
"Open!" we said. With palsied hands
ho oropod tbo door ,rYb a Jo,,Ir nos
sage we struggled to d darker room
There were four women and three men
poor, worn, physically wretched beings.
fare all we'll here?'' ooh, yes, sahibs;
we are all well.' s'No one has had sick
ness?" mo, sahibs; nome" We looked
at the crouching erowd-the alert-eyed,
suspicious, lying Hindus-and glanced at
Yes, sahibs." We were about to turn,
when one of us exclaimed "What is
this?" The head-covering was pulled
from woman. She was a shriveled old
creature. And she was dead, cold dead
dead of the plague. That is how the
Shadow spreads over India.
l am writing this at Karachi, the great
port of Sind, with a conglomerate popu-
lation of feeble Hindoos, fanatic Moslems,
staggering Afghans, sullen but brawny
Baluchis, and a dozen low caste races.
The population is small compared with
Bombay. But the vigor of the plague is
appalling. One walks through the streets
with hesitating breath to watch the hasty
professions of the dying, to visit the
search parties looking for the dead, to in
spect the burning of the houses of the
dead and the destruction of their cloth
ing. When the plague first came it at
tackled the Hindus. "Ah,' said the Mo
hammedans, 'this is the Hindus' scourge
we have nothing to fear" But death
hoe ooc re d1111 +Lo II
hammedars, and they die like flies.
"Allah is angry with us; we have done
wrong; it is visitation they say.
Some months ago the statue of Queen
Victoria in Bombay, was disigured.
"Sahib,' said a furrow- browed, large
boned, rusty voiced Mohammedan to me,
"Sahib, understand all. The English
we natives did the indignity. And they
punish us; they are poisoning all our
people. All, sahib, you smile. Allah is
great, and this is the truth. When our
people fall sick your doctors come TO
them. They give them poison. Then
they die. Sahib, have 1 not seen? Do 1
not know? All the people in India are to
be killed that way"
So the ravaging infection sweeps on it's
pestilential course. 1t is hid from the
authorities; whole families succumb.
When a case is discovered medicine will
not be taken. "It is poison; you want
to poison me!'' is the cry. Fightin g
against the widest fanaticism, strug-
Cling bravely, but often down heartedly,
work of the authorities. The Moham-
medans hav verse from the Koran
blessed by priest. They tie it in
leather case upon their arms. If that will
not induce Allah to keep off the vista
ton, what will?"