Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-02-02

q rebel fortress whenever they cared to hold it.
Often one hill was held by q force while the
garrison of the other was absent, but more
often than enough both hills were garriSoned.
Then battle" took place.
My house was often in the direct line OF
fire, and lost goodly portion Of the shingles
from my roof. On one occasion my cow was
killed. On another my cook was shot right In
the soup tureen as she was bringing that
Steaming utensi from the kitchen to the dining
room. My chickens died from q strange all
ment which my houseboy diagnosed as lead
poisoning caused by their enormous appetiteS
for the lead bullets they picked up In the yard.
I have often stopped as low possible and
dashed from the house to the hospital amid a
veritable hail of lead, and once, while was
doing that very thing. bullet passed through
the sleeve of my coat without touching my arm.
EXCEPT for these periodic and rather casual
battles" that took place over heads.
the revolution did no harm, at least for some
months after my arrival, and before either side
grew courageous enough to come to grips with
the other in our vicinity, a wandering ponch0
peddler, who came, he said, from Bogota, ar
rived with number of wooden ponchos for
sale. Some of these were not new. Where
he got them is so far as / am concerned, q
mystery but it is not unlikely that they origi-
mated in some hospital or some soldiers COM
centration point where smallpox was prev
alent.
At any rate, shortly after his arrival and
Just before he had sold out his small stock to
our poems, the fellow became very i'll. Natu-
rally no native thought of bringing him to me,
and he associated, of course only with the
natives. The result was that he had been very
sick indeed for several days before word of it
reached my ears. And even then was not
perturbed-until I visited him and made a
diagnosis. That he had smallpox was obvious
even to my inexperience, and that he had
been living among those two thousand natives
for week or more made 1t rather plain that
the disease would not end there Nor was
wrong.
The second case appeared promptly enough.
of course, but it, too. well developed before
was told about it. To make the matter worse,
the man who came down was one who had q
stall in the little plaza where he sold vege-
tables From then on cases developed rapidly,
and shortly realized that had an epidemic
on my hands-an epidemic, furthermore, of
the continent kind, known sometimes as black"
smallpox. 1t is very terrible disease with
high mortality.
BY now we were completely cut off from
Honda, our base of supplies and all the vac
cine we had was two years old and useless.
Our only hope, then, was to isolate cases as
soon as they appeared, in order to prevent, as
much as possible, the spread of the disease.
Every hygenic method of which I knew was
put into immediate effect, but the epidemic
was with us.
1t was not hard to convince the men that
isolation was essential, but the mothers, whose
children developed the disease, were quite an
other matter. They wept and struggled. They
shrieked and fought One woman. early in
the epidemic, attacked me furiousy when
proposed taking her child from her. and almost
blinded me. She ripped my face with her
nails from my forehead to my chin, and there
after visited my cases with two guards armed