PLAGUE TT^ INDIA. 331 



The three large cities of the Punjab — Delhi, Amritsar, and Lahore — 

 have had remarkabh^ little plague. Delhi, which is situated in a 

 stony region, appeared to be nearly all pakka built, witli the excep- 

 tion of a few lanes around a celebrated black mosque of the fourteenth 

 century; and even the villages round Delhi are built of a kind of 

 conglomerate of stone and clay. Amritsar also is a well-built l)rick 

 city, and in Lahore there are no such extensive quarters of mud- 

 built houses as in Allahabad and Lucknow. The smaller towns and 

 market villages have in some instances furnished a large part of all 

 the plague deaths credited to a rural area. I was told by the civil 

 surgeon at (xhazipur that the largest totals in his district this year 

 were coming in from certain towns or market centers which had a 

 considerable Mohammedan population; and in the district of Mut- 

 tra I saw for myself two such market towns with nnich })lague in 

 them, one of them, population of 0,000, having had -100 deaths in the 

 four weeks preceding, and a maxinuun of 25 the day before ; while the 

 other, with a population of 0,000, had 19 new cases reported that 

 morning. It is the melancholy fate of those old country towns of 

 the Mohammedan period, originally well built, with brick houses and 

 paved streets, and in some cases Avith fine sarais or forts, to have fallen 

 into decay of trade and dilapidation of buildings, the houses often 

 "pakka Avithout, but kaccha within,"' as explained to me of an old 

 two-storied brick house at a village near Benares, in which the rats 

 had been found dead, and, two or three weeks after, the whole of the 

 inmates, to the number of 18, had died. 



:means of avoidixg placjue — evacl atiox. 



According to everyone's belief and experience in India, there is only 

 one thing to be done when plague appears in a place, or the rats begin 

 to fall, namely, to clear out, or, at all events, to avoid spending the 

 night there. Hence the strange spectacle evety evening about sunset, 

 in the city of Bijapur, of the whole population, save the inmates of 

 half a dozen bungalows, to the number of some 20,000, quitting the 

 bazaars, Avorkshops, and offices, and making their way outside the 

 w^alls to a large camp on the downs around the railway station. This 

 phenomenon is the more suggestive at Bijapur, as the city Avas de- 

 serted once before, tAvo hundred year's ago, and most probabl}'^ for the 

 same reason as noAv, namely, plague, and continued to be in great part 

 deserted until it Avas made the administratiA^e headquarters of the 

 district about thirty years ago. Also in the country round Bijapur 

 the people haA^e learned the lesson of evacuation Aery thoroughly. I 

 went through an old fortified village of l^j.OOO people 5 miles to the 

 Avest of it, AA-ithout finding a living creature; the streets Avere de- 

 serted, and the doors of all the houses padlocked, the Avhole of the 



