294 NATURE AND LIFE. 



to examine all arrivals, and the physicians appointed for 

 the supervision of Hedjaz were requested to transmit to 

 Egypt reports on the sanitary state of the pilgrims. The 

 prescribed rules were observed, without any appearance 

 made by cholera as usual, and it was supposed for a time 

 that leave might be given to the vessels with their freight 

 of pilgrims to go directly to Suez. The first one was on 

 the point of sailing, when the epidemic broke out at Mecca. 

 A carrier promptly brought orders to Djeddah to deliver 

 foul bills to the vessels, and dispatch the pilgrims to El- 

 Wedj. The disappointment of the captains and ships' 

 agents may be imagined. Several of them even declared 

 that they would sail straight for Suez in spite of the order. 

 The firmness of the physicians prevented them, though 

 with great difficulty. At the same time this revival of the 

 cholera at Mecca created so great a panic among the pil- 

 grims that they deserted the city with all speed, so as to 

 put any gradual succession of departures out of the ques- 

 tion. Hard as it was, the lazaretto at El-Wedj discharged 

 its duty sufficiently, thanks to the sagacity and devoted- 

 ness of the medical men, and the cholera did not make its 

 way into Egypt. 



If the system of sea quarantines is efficient in some 

 cases, it does not for the most part give governments the 

 means of intercepting the cholera with certainty. We 

 give another instance of the most instructive kind, which 

 will close our remarks upon international preventive 

 measures against the Asiatic plague. 



Until the month of May, in 1856, quarantine was com- 

 pulsory and general for persons arriving in Russia by sea. 

 All travelers, without exception, were placed under sani- 

 tary inspection and seclusion for from ten to twenty days. 

 A French cultivator of the vine settled in the Crimea lately 

 told De Valcourt that on his arrival at Odessa, in 1848, he 

 with his family and the other passengers were made to land 



