112 VISITS TO MADAGASCAR. chap. iv. 



The population of Port Louis and its suburbs is about 

 50,000, but during the first week in June the deaths fre- 

 quently exceeded one hundred per day. On the 5th of June 

 there were said to be one hundred and seventy deaths, and 

 on the 6th one hundred and thirty. The progress and 

 fatal termination of the disease in individual cases was 

 frightfully rapid. The wife of Mr. Kelsey's coachman, a 

 healthy young woman, was seized late in the evening, and 

 was a corpse before morning. In many other instances it 

 was still more rapid, and I heard that in some cases scarcely 

 two hours elapsed between seizure and death. Every kind 

 of vehicle that could be converted into a sort of hearse was 

 engaged by the municipality. Some of these were always 

 kept standing at the Towti Hall, and others in appointed 

 public places in the suburbs, for the removal of the bodies 

 of the dead. It was found necessary to appoint additional 

 officers and assistants at the office for registering deaths and 

 granting licenses to bury. The ordinary business of the 

 to'svn was suspended except at the chemists' and druggists' 

 shops, which were literally thronged from morning till night. 

 On some days there were no markets, — butchers, bakers, 

 fishermen, all being either ill or dead, or flying to the 

 country for fear. Day after day the public joiu-nals came 

 out printed only on one page, and that containing chiefly 

 formularies or directions for the treatment of the disease. 

 The whole town was a scene of desolation, nearly one half 

 of the houses and shops were closed, and in those that were 

 open only one attendant could be found. In the streets few 

 persons were met except those who hurried along with 

 medicine. Almost the only carriages seen were the dead- 

 carts. In a short walk one morning I passed seven ; and, on 

 inquiring of the driver of one, who was waiting outside the 

 cemetery as I left it, how many bodies he had in his vehicle, 

 he answered eight, and said it was his second journey. 



