Year: 1879

A CITY OF DESOLATION.
New York Sun.J


Day by day the news from Memphis
grows worse. The fever Is slowly
spreading through the city; thirteen


new cases We're reported yesterday,
some Of them In quarters OF the city


that have hitherto been free from IL.


The flight of the citizens continues,


but one by one the doors of refuge are


being shut and barred In their faces.
Six more Southern towns have de-
ciared strict quarantine against them;
and the news that two refugees from


Memphis have been Frustrated by tho
fever in Louisville wilt probably pre-
cipitate the same action in other towns.
Meanwhile the Memphis authorities
are pushing tho preparations for tho
camp to which it is proposed to remove
the poor,


What 4 calamity! The stoppage for
months together of tho machinery of
trade in such a place, and tho transfer.
which is now going on, of the stocks
OF goods of merchants to other cities.
can hardly fail OF do permanent dam
age to the business interests of Men,
phis; to give that cnterprising town n
blow from which it will be slow to re-
cover, If 1t does ever rebound. But the
abandonment of tho place by every.
body who keeps tho wheels OF its pros
porous activities i'll motion means
something worse. 1t means great suf-
fering among those who are compelled
to remain within its limits, to say
nothing OF tho l,ardships which many
OF tho refugees must undergo.





Can we expect that tho epidemic,
which until the coming of black frost
has time within which to do its raw
ages, will be confined to this one city.
even ii it is shut of from the rest oi
the country and turned into a vast
plague hospital? It is an appalling
spectre which the imaginations of the
people Of the Mississippi Valley are
creating, one that walks over thou
sands Of fresh graves to lay its hands
on the survivors of the pestilence of
last summer.


But so far, though reason has un-
questionably been furnished for evil
forebodings, and though we may see q
good deal of the disease between Au-
gust and November, the promptness OF
the people of Memphis in running
away, and the immediate establish
ment of quarantine against the city,
may check its progress and save the
country from a repetition of the expe-
rienco of last year. We saw then how
Mobile and Galveston, by rigid sys-
tenn of exclusion, which seems to be
the only check against the progress of
yellow fever known at present, kept
the pestilence away from their doors,
though they had in previous years
suffered from it.


From the time of tho subsidence of
the pestilence last autumn until the
warm weather was again upon US in its
full force, in Congress, and in health
associations and doctors' societies, yell
low fever and its prevention were the.
themes of ceaseless discussion. Tray
cling missions studied 1t in tho
cities it ravaged, aud a National Health
Board was organized at great cost. The
doctors disagreed as to its origin,
whether it is of foreign importation
necessarily, or of indigenous growth,
and volumes of words were written
about the disease. Yet here we stand
lest it may again ravagc the
South, we'll knowing that if it once
gets foothold there it is just rs likely
70 pursue its devastating course un-
checked, rs il Congress and the doc
lors had not lcgislatcd and debated.