1 70 PESTILENCE IN CEARA. 



Here perhaps we could not do better than cite a 

 remarkable instance, occurring in our own day, where 

 enormous losses, considering the number of the popu- 

 lation, have been recorded, which at one time bid fair 

 to depopulate the whole surrounding country. This 

 calamity took place in a dry and almost rainless 

 district, which furnishes a most curious example of 

 one of these exceptional variations of climate, such as 

 are occasionally, as we have stated, to be met with 

 in the equatorial zone. 



We refer to the famine and pestilence which com- 

 mitted such havoc in the province of Ceara, on the 

 north-east coast of Brazil. Though situated well 

 within the equatorial zone, only a few degrees to the 

 southwards of the equator, Ceara is a dry, hot, and 

 almost rainless region, with cool nights, and intense 

 solar heats by day, much more characteristic of the 

 desert, than of the equatorial zone. The Brazilian 

 " Sertao" or wilderness here forms a broad belt of 

 wide sandy plains and bush, lying to the southward 

 of the Amazonian forests at this point, where there 

 are long dry seasons. During the prevalence of a 

 prolonged drought in 1877 78 (co-temporary with 

 the great Indian and Chinese famines), three quarters 

 of a million of people are stated, on good authority, 

 to have here died of disease and starvation, in the 

 eight provinces of eastern and central Brazil. The 

 prevailing types of disease were a form of black 

 small-pox of malignant character, and a relapsing fever 

 of typhus-like nature which is often found to follow 

 in the train of famine. The mortality which followed 

 the Irish famine of 1846, for instance, was due to a 

 fever of this type. In the case at present before us, 



