CHAPTER XIX.

FAMINE AND PESTILENCE.

“Then--see those million worlds which burn and roll, Around us--their inhabitants beheld My spher’ed light wave in wide Heaven; the sea Was lifted by strange tempests, and new fire From earthquake rifted mountains of bright snow Shook its portentous hair beneath heaven’s frowns, Lightning and inundation vexed the plains, Blue thistles bloomed in cities; foodless toads Within voluptuous chambers panting crawled; When plague had fallen on man and beast and worm, And famine: and black blight on herb and tree.

* * * * *

* * and the thin air, my breath, was stained, With the contagion of a mother’s hate, Breathed on her child’s destroyer.”

Signs and wonders, grave omens, strange portents, have by the ignorant and superstitious been believed to precede and presage the approach of famine and pestilence. Comets have terrified the multitudes; the rabble has quailed at the aurora, and blanched with fear at the sight of colored rain and snow. And yet nothing is clearer than that famine is the result of the simplest meteorological causes. A deficiency in rainfall is sufficient cause--is almost the only cause. Elsewhere we have noted how dependent we are upon the winds and clouds, and we need spend no further explanation of their causes and variations.

Owing to the decidedly local character of our own rains, the probability of a general famine in this country is very slight, though local droughts are of continual occurrence. Europe has been affected with serious famines at various periods; but the greatest “harvest of death” has been in Oriental lands. During the present century there have been two or three severe famines in Asia Minor, the last but two or three years since. But it is in India and China, with their overcrowded populations and lack of facilities for inter-communication, that famine becomes most terrible in its ravages. The story of one is that of another; a deficient rainfall, a failure of the rice crop, a multitude eating grass, dead leaves, straw, offal--millions starving. As these lines are written come reports of great dearth in some provinces in Japan.

One of the best known famines of recent date is the great Bengal famine of 1866. When the rice crop failed the British government at once used every possible means to facilitate the importation of rice and established large systems of public works that the people might earn money wherewith to buy. Yet it was but the chief of many great employes. Great companies pushed great projects. The customary wages remained steady; but rice had trebled in price. Hence, even by doing double work the people could not procure their usual food. And no allowance had been made for the scores of isolated villages where the news of relief measures penetrated not. So the employed grew weaker continually and less able to labor and earn; those unemployed perished by hundreds. Private charity supported thousands; for the Hindoo dreads the beggars’ curse as much as the loss of caste. The women added their labors to those of the laboring husbands, but this did not suffice to support the weakening families.

Then government charity was broached; but it was at once seen that efforts in this direction would cause the cessation of individual charity. Every village looks after its own poor; every noble family continues to dispense alms, even when every vestige of wealth and greatness is gone. It would not do to take steps that might instantly suspend this work. Yet the famished crowds grew daily greater, and the residents of the European quarter of Calcutta were horrified by the influx of thousands of squalid creatures in the last extremity of hunger.

At this crisis another factor came into play. Every pious Hindoo merchant writes at the top of his day-book each day the name of the divinity whose favor he courts, and immense sums--even millions of dollars--are spent in the annual celebration in honor of Kali, the especial favorite of Bengal. A wealthy and humane Hindoo merchant suggested that Kali would be better pleased if her celebration fund were used to relieve her starving worshippers. The idea became popular at once; and the fund, promptly swelled by the exigencies of the case, aided greatly in the relief of the destitute. When we remember that Kali is a fiend incarnate, who delights in human blood, and wears a necklace of skulls, we can but consider the suggestion of the pious merchant as savoring of the ludicrous.

Another objection to government charity was in the fact that the government could only hope to establish a few great central depots. Again, the Hindoo does not discriminate between the professional beggars, fakirs, hermits, yogis, and those whom we consider more deserving: and such discrimination as it was certain the government would make would only render it odious, and probably cause grave disturbances. So the government lost three weeks when it should have been actively at work. Meanwhile English residents were spending liberally their means in private relief depots.

The government found its way out by making quietly large grants to the private relief committees established. But it was two or three months ere the best scheme was adopted. Rice could be imported in abundance. How to place it within the purchasing power of the people was the problem. The government turned merchant, and established depots where the laborer could buy at a price within his means. But while placing the market rate within reach of the needy one-third, the rate for the remainder must not be disturbed, or the merchants would be antagonized. It was easily accomplished. The market was opened but a short time each day; and the “respectable” Hindoo would never expose himself or his family to be jostled by the hungry labor-stained multitude that at once thronged the places. And public opinion, all-powerful in little Bengali towns, strongly condemned any one who without good reason, bought at the relief depots.

By June, every one was anxious to know if the rains would come and insure the September crops--there are two rice harvests each year. Thousands of sacrifices were offered, and sometimes human beings were offered. But the rains came, and the fall brought abundant crops.

The total loss of life was about 1,250,000, of whom one-fourth starved outright, while the remainder perished from disease and pestilence resulting from the scarcity of food. A famine in the same region in 1769 carried off 6,000,000; but then the government did nothing, and after the scourge immense tracts of cultivated land returned to their original wilderness. The reverse was the result in 1866. The methodical work of the government and the great corporations left the land far more improved than ever before; with the increasing facilities for communication and transportation, a repetition of the disaster even of 1866 is almost impossible--certainly beyond probability.

We may not go into details of scores of famines, ancient and modern; we have selected this one, showing how, even in adverse circumstances, prompt work lessens the ravages of the destroyer. Judging from the percentage of 1769, the loss of life in 1866 would, but for the relief work, have been about 9,000,000--one-third the population of Bengal. The only other calamity in recent years at all comparable, is the terrible famine of 1876 in China. How many perished then may not be definitely known; but it has been variously estimated at from 15,000,000 to 50,000,000. We may not dwell upon the horrors of such things--the hideous cannibalism that has at times resulted; as when we are told that during one famine in Egypt, in the dark ages, human flesh was openly sold in the markets!

A terrible scourge that frequently visited the old world in the middle and dark ages is that known as the “Black Death.” As to its real character and source, the world is yet in ignorance. Whether it was readily conveyed in the atmosphere or not seems a mooted point. Modern medical science has robbed many contagious diseases of their terrors. Small-pox is easily guarded against. Diptheria has no terrors for clean streets. Yellow Jack has little chance against sound sanitation and hygiene. The germ theory of disease has greatly aided disinfective measures.

In contagious diseases, infection proceeds chiefly from personal contact with a diseased person or objects that have been touched by him. In malarial diseases there is no danger from personal contact; the disease resulting clearly from a poisoned atmosphere. But in the case of what are known as epidemics, the source of infection is not clear. The disease may attack thousands in a short time, and yet not appear readily communicable by personal contact. Doubtless in these cases the atmosphere is the medium of infection. Hence, disinfective measures are of little or no use against them. So while such can not properly be classed among atmospheric phenomena, yet it would seem that in the atmosphere we find the chief vehicle of the disease.

We may not here undertake any discussion of the several deadly contagious diseases that are known to modern medicine. Suffice it to say nearly all of them may be classed as filth diseases, arising from impure food or water, or filthy streets. Most notable of these is perhaps the terrible Asiatic cholera, that has swept Europe frequently, and which is now known to originate in the overcrowding and filth attendant upon the great twelve-yearly festival in honor of a Hindoo idol. Had the people of the middle ages, who regarded its ravages as a visitation of God upon them for their sins, been aware of its origin, they might have been disposed to wonder why they should be punished for the idolatry of a people thousands of miles away. Possibly such reflections might have originated either a new species of crusade, or have opened the missionary movement several centuries earlier than it really began.

Comparatively speaking, there is little mystery left in connection with the greater contagious plagues known to modern medicine. But the famous Black Death, or Plague, or the Pestilence, as it is variously called, remains a secret so far as its origin and its proper treatment are concerned. Its symptoms are somewhat variously described by various ancient writers. In one point all agree: that when near death the body of the victim was covered with dark, gangrenous or carbuncular spots and swellings, or boils made their appearance in the glands of the neck, armpit and groin. It may be that the plague of boils and blains sent upon the Egyptians was none other than this Black Death. And doubtless it is identical with the terrible plague that visited Athens, B. C., 430, continuing its ravages through three years. People died in swarms, and the dead lay about the streets.

During the middle ages it appeared in Europe on an average, every fifty years, its last visitation being upon London, in 1665, when 100,000 people perished. Here its danger was increased by the fact that its character was more insidious than usual. The plague described by Thucydides was characterized by high fever and unquenchable thirst, and a reddish inflammation or eruption of the skin lasting seven or eight days before the appearance of the fatal spots; while from Defoe’s account of the plague in London, these symptoms, though common, were anything but universal; and frequently persons felt no special disorder till the appearance of the spots told that death was at hand. Both in Athens and London, contact with the dead bodies seems to have been fatal to any animal. The suddenness of death in many cases calls to mind the last plague of Egypt, or the fate of Sennacherib’s host:

“Like the leaves of the forest, when summer is green, That host with their banners at sunset were seen; Like the leaves of the forest, when autumn hath blown, That host in the morning lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed; And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still.

And there lay the steed, with his nostrils all wide, But through them there rolled not the breath of his pride; And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf, And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.”

The horrors of the plague are beyond description. The panic consequent upon the appearance of Yellow Jack in the South gives but a faint idea of it. And this very panic was a most--we had almost said the most--powerful factor in the augmentation of the plague’s fatality. It is also the case with cholera that a disturbed condition of the mind is fatal in the mildest form of the disease. Some one has thus embodied the case, though of course with exaggeration: A traveler leaving Bagdad met Cholera entering. “For what are you come?” “To slay 10,000 people.” Each went his way. On returning, the traveler met Cholera once more. “But you killed 30,000!” “Nay, friend, I killed but 10,000; _scare_ killed the rest!”

Occasionally this panic took a terrible form; as when during a season of plague in Germany, the idea seized the people that the Jews had occasioned the plague by poisoning the wells; and Jews were murdered, tortured, and burned by the hundreds; which reminds one of a modern writer’s sarcastic definition of hydrophobia. “A peculiar periodical madness, impelling men to destroy dogs.”

Of the thousand tales of interest that have come down to us, we may give place to one, a story of Florence. This city had twenty-three visitations of the plague; the first in 1325, the last in 1630. The plague of 1338 is the noted one described by Boccaccio. The story which we condense here is an incident of the plague of 1400.

Among the noble families who were sworn foes, were those of Rondinelli and Almieri; and one might as soon have expected the lion to mate with the serpent, as to hope for an alliance between the two families. But Cupid has never bothered his meddlesome pate with politics or theology; and so it came about that, as with Montague and Capulet, Antonio Rondinelli fell in love with Ginevra Almieri, one of the most beautiful women of the time--certainly unsurpassed in Florence. Of course, Signor Almieri could not for a moment think of such a hateful match, and so Ginevra was given to Francesco Agolanti. The young wife remained faithful; but she gradually faded; and in four short years sunk into a sort of lethargic stupor, resulting in death. The plague was then at its highest, and the panic was great. Every death from uncertain cause was a source of alarm, and burials were informal and hasty. The poor young wife was promptly bundled off to the family vault beneath one of the great cathedrals.

It seems that it was merely a case of coma, or suspended animation. The lady revived, only to find herself entombed with the skeletons of her husband’s ancestors. Horrible as this would be for any one, it is a wonder that the weak nerves of Ginevra did not give way entirely under the strain. She screamed and called--only the dead heard. She groped about her tomb, and found a ladder; clambering up, she found a ray of moonlight streaming through a crevice, and learned her location. She looked abroad

“Upon the moonlight loveliness, all sunk In one unbroken silence, save the moan From the lone room of death, or the dull sound Of the slow-moving hearse. The homes of men Were now all desolate, and darkness there And solitude and silence took their seat, In the deserted streets: for the dark wing Of a destroying angel had gone by And blasted all existence, and had changed The gay, the busy, and the crowded mart To one cold speechless city of the dead.”

After desperate effort, and with strength astounding in a frame so weak, she forced up one of the paving stones that formed the roof of the vault, and dragged herself out. Sitting wearily down for a brief rest, a sudden shower came up and chilled her to the bone. She rose and went to her husband’s house. He, at a second story window, astounded at the ghostly figure in grave clothes that roused him in the dead hour of night, “when ghosts do mostly walk abroad,” and doubtless remembering that his treatment of the living wife had not been such as to recommend him to the favorable notice of her ghost, shut the window with alternate imprecations and invocations, and covered his head with the bedclothes--well-known in all ages to be thoroughly ghost-proof. Ginevra was similarly repulsed from the houses of her father and of various relatives. As a last resort, though exceedingly repugnant to a woman of her delicate feeling, she betook herself, almost chilled to death, to the house of Rondinelli. To his inquiry as to who was there, a weak voice responded, “Do you not know me, Signor Antonio? It is I--Ginevra. Neither my father nor my husband will receive me. Will you, too, turn me away?”

Great as was Antonio’s fear of ghosts, the bare possibility that Ginevra was actually there in the flesh was a far stronger consideration; and he hastened to test the reality of his fair visitant. Having her properly cared for, he hastened to the vault, where the displaced stone confirmed her story.

A few days later, Antonio boldly applied to the civil authorities to marry the “late Ginevra degli Agolanti,” and backed his application with certificates of the death and burial of the lady! The authorities hearing the facts--and mayhap being romantically disposed--decided that the lady was legally dead, that her relatives, by their own unwilling confession, had persisted in so regarding her; hence, she was no longer bound by any legal tie to the living, father or husband! She was absolutely free!

So Antonio and Ginevra were married, and of course, “lived happily ever after.”