PLAGUE IN INDIA. 



Five outbreaks of jilmjue in a village near Dharv>ar. 

 [Population, 4,661.] 



321 



This village was a purely agricultural one, with no cattle trade, 

 which is the common type on the rich black plain, or desh, extending 

 eastward from Dharwar. The road all the Avay from the city 

 passed through an unbroken expanse of wheat, jowar, and cotton, 

 many of the wheat fields being of 20 acres. The area of the village 

 in question was about 2,000 acres, but much of it was in the hands of 

 a few large farmers. The patel of the village, a headman in stature 

 as w^ell as in name, farmed 100 acres, another resident farmed 200, 

 and several who were resident in Dharwar City were also large own- 

 ers and occupiers. About a fourth part of the villagers were labor- 

 ers who held no land, many having lost it by mortgaging to the 

 wealthier villagers or to pleaders in Dharwar, who had thus acquired 

 their large farms. The village had once been defended by a wall 

 and still retained two gates. Although it contained a number of 

 well-to-do farmers, it did not contain a single pakka dwelling house. 

 The houses were all of mud, many of them raised about a foot above 

 tlie road on plinths of stone, Avhich was got from a hill overlooking 

 tJie village on the north. There was only one masonry structure — a 

 variegatefl marble hall with open-top galleries for public meetings, 

 which had been built recently by subscription. The streets or lanes 

 were fairly wide, unpaved, and deep in dust. Few of the houses had 

 verandas, and they were all equally common or mean. The usual 

 ground plan was three rooms, one behind the other, with a back door 

 opposite the street door, but without windows, the cattle being kept in 

 the apartment next the street. All round the backs of the houses ran 

 a space which was inclosed in places, traversed b}^ not overclean foot- 

 paths and overgrown with bushes ; but in the dry weather it was not 

 notably filthy, and there appeared to be no particular need for what 

 is called village sanitation; at least, one did not see where the sanita- 

 tion was to begin, so long as the streets were unpaved, and the whole 

 village, except the marble hall, l)uilt of mud. At the date of my visit 

 in December the fifth epidemic of plague had only just begun, but it 



