History of Anivial Plagues. 



99 



this time, more and more frequent; for thcv recurred in 1344, 

 in Ven-chow^ where the sea overflowed in consequence; in 1345, 

 in Ki-chow^ and in both the following years in Canton, with 

 subterraneous thunder. Meanwhile floods and famines devast- 

 ated various districts, until 1347, when the fury of the elements 

 subsided in China. ^ 



The signs of terrestrial commotions commenced in Europe 

 in the year 1348, after the intervening districts of country in 

 Asia had probably been visited in the same maimer. 



On the island of Cyprus, the plague from the East had 

 already broken out ; when an earthquake shook the foundations 

 of the island, and was accompanied by so frightful a hurricane, 

 that the inhabitants who had slain their Mahometan slaves, 

 in order that they might not themselves be subjugated by them, 

 fled in dismay, in all directions. The sea overflowed, the ships 

 were dashed to pieces on the rocks, and few outlived the terrific 

 event, wherebv this fertile and blooming island was converted 

 into a desert. Before the earthquake, a pestiferous wind spread 

 so poisonous an odour, that many, being overpowered by it, fell 

 down suddenly and expired in dreadful agonies,^ Villanius, the 

 historian of Florence, gives an account of a pestilence, which, 

 beginning in Upper Asia, in 1346, spread from Cathay, the 

 ancient name for China, in all directions, nearly depopulating 

 the whole of Asia, and penetrating Egypt, Greece, and Italy, to 

 France, Spain, England, and Germany. It arose, he tells us, 

 from a foul-smelling vapour, which was imagined to have eman- 

 ated from some fiery body of aerial or terrestrial origin. This 

 gas destroyed all that stood in its way, and horses and cattle 

 suffered severely, but not more so than the human species. Trees, 

 and everything else, for the space of fifteen days^ journey around 

 its track, were blighted, and curious creatures, furnished with 

 feet and tails, worms, and swarms of snakes, fell upon the earth. 

 In a short time these putrefied, and the stench from them so in- 

 fected the atmosphere, that pestilence prevailed everywhere.^ 



This phenomena is one of the rarest that has ever been ob- 

 served, for nothing is more constant than the composition ot the 



* Deguignes. History of China, p. 226. • Ibid. p. 225. 



' Gio. Villani. Istoric Florentine, book xii. chap. 121, 122. 



