PLAGUE IN INDIA. 337 



years in Bombay and the Punjab, and as one of them has a popida- 

 tion nearly, twice as great as these two latter together, it is unsafe 

 to prophesy what heights plague ma}^ not reach in them before it 

 begins to decline. In any case we may reckon with plague douiesti- 

 cated in the soil of tens of thousands of villages, making an endemic 

 area larger than that of cholera was ever estimated to be, and from 

 such an endemic area we may expect future outbreaks at intervals 

 of years, if not from year to year. In England, for thirty or forty 

 years after the great invasion of plague in 1348, a poet of the time 

 com])ared the state of sickness to '" the rain that raineth where we 

 rest should " to the drip through a" leaky roof, a chronic state of dis- 

 comfort and uneasiness. 



The three centuries of ])lague in European towns came to an end 

 without auy conscious etl'ort to check th'> infection anywhere, so far 

 as one knows. The most ])robable exjdanation is that the towns had 

 emerged slowly from their media'val life, which was peculiarly favor- 

 able to plague, having thrown down their Avails and gates and grad- 

 ually shifted the pressure of ])opulation to new sites, which, however, 

 were often befouled by the accunnilated i-efuse of the old walled city, 

 and therefore ai)t to retain the infection many years longer. The 

 curious statutes of 32 and 35, Henry YIII, on the decay of practically 

 all the chief towns of England and Wales, bear out that hy})othesis, 

 according to the reading of their ])reamble adopted ])v Nicholls and 

 Eroude. At all events mediteval limits were outgrown in all the 

 towns of P^urope, and, after a transition jjeriod of a century or more, 

 plague died out by reason of changed conditions. 



India at the present day contains more traces of changed sites than 

 any country in the world, and some of these changes have actually oc- 

 curred under British rule. Sometimes tlie changes of site have been 

 caused by a river deserting its old channel and leaving a city too far 

 from the traffic, but there are undoubted instances of sites abandoned 

 owing to chronic sickness. The British cantonments afford instances 

 in the past and may afford more in the future. Dacca and Berham- 

 pore were botli condemned, the latter in 1833 after an original outlay 

 of £300,000 ; they were healthy stations at first and became sickly by 

 degrees until they were untenable. What has been happening in 

 India from time immemorial, both to town sites and to village sites 

 through the pressure of events, may be anticipated by a deliberate 

 policy in order to hasten the disappearance of ])lague. In some of the 

 towns of the Deccan and Gujarat neAv suburl)s are actually springing 

 up for the richer class to avoid the infection. Eor the villages it is 

 n.ot out of the question that some law might be made to prevent rebuild- 

 ing on the same foundation when the nnul walls crumble, as they do 

 periodically; but of such a law the essential condition would be the 



