PLAGUE IN INDIA. 325 



PLAGUE IN THE OLD VILLAGES OF SHAITPUR. 



The other irrigation colony, betAveen the Chenab and the Jhehnn 

 rivers, is now being planted throughout the jungle of Shahpur dis- 

 trict, following the lines of the Jhelum Canal. Last year Shahpur 

 had the enormous mortality of 3o,000 from plague among 524,000 

 people, most of it in the time of the wheat harvest. I suppose that 

 some small part of it occurred in the new villages, but if the instances 

 which I saw^ were fair samples most of it must have come from old 

 villages, of which there are many within the valley of the Jhelum, 

 depending, as of old, on wells and on the rainfall for their harvests. 

 The three villages which I saw at close quarters were within a few 

 miles of each other, all raised conspicuously above the dead level of 

 the plain on conical mounds of black earth. Their mud houses cov- 

 ered the sides and sunnnit of these mounds, which were doubtless 

 formed by the debris of former villages upon the same site, and may 

 have been growing by accretions of rubbish ever since the time when 

 Alexander overthrew Porus on a battlefield not many miles distant. 

 They looked the filthiest and most dilapidated villages that I had 

 seen anywhere, and were credibly said to be swarming with rats. 

 Each of them had lost about a fourth part of the population by 

 plague the year before. 



Before I leave the villages, which have nine-tenths of all the prac- 

 tical interest for plague, I Asill give a few minutes to two questions 

 about them. First, is there any real need or excuse for all this mud 

 building? and, secondly, are the large, compact, fort-like villages nec- 

 essary and likely to continue? 



MUD WALLS. 



First, as to the almost universal nnid walls and roofs in the north- 

 west. In the Punjab districts which suffer the extremes of heat and 

 cold, the excuse is made that mud walls are the coolest in the hot 

 weather and the warmest in the cold. But the more general explana- 

 tion is undoubtedly the ease and small cost with which mud houses 

 can be run up. On that point I may be permitted to quote a few 

 sentences by the late Mr. Frederick Growse, who gave much attention 

 to Indian architecture and did much to revive the native building arts 

 in his collectorate of Bulandshar. 



Replying to a circular of the year 1888 on the (juestion of village 

 sanitation, he wrote : 



Under such supervision an ordinary Indian village would in tlio courso of a 

 few years be less repulsive in iippeariuu-e than it is at prosont. hut I dnuht 

 whether the death returns would he materially reduced. * * * 'pi|,> ,.,>;,] 

 scourge of the country is fever. This is felt all the year round, and will con- 



