642 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



records give abundant evidence; especially in the epidemics of 

 1867 and 1879. 



But, spread all over the country, especially in its northern 

 parts, there is a large Mohammedan population, from among 

 whom there pours out an annual pilgrimage which wends its way 

 to Mecca, the holy place which every faithful Moslem strives to 

 reach — a pilgrimage which of late years has been a recurring 

 danger to the Western world, having been the means of introduc- 

 ing to Egypt in 1866 that outbreak of cholera which carried off 

 sixty thousand of its inhabitants in the course of three months ; 

 and of sending on to England the infection, which destroyed six 

 thousand people in London ; besides being the origin of the vari- 

 ous epidemics which have fallen so heavily on the south of 

 Europe, although they have not done great harm to our own more 

 favored land. 



The fairs and pilgrimages of the East constitute the danger of 

 the West, and it is now recognized in every land that this danger 

 is vastly aggravated by the greater rapidity of communication in 

 these latter days. When by weary marches, or sailing in small 

 boats, tacking day after day against opposing winds, months, nay 

 sometimes years, were spent in the journey, those who were taken 

 ill died in the transit; whole caravans melted away, and ships 

 with cholera-stricken crews were lost, together with their crowded 

 cargo of holy pilgrims, and thus the outer world was saved. But 

 with quicker means of communication, with railways and steam- 

 boats, and the general hurry of modern life, pilgrims also have 

 quickened their pace, and, what is most important, have length- 

 ened the stages and lightened the labor of their journey, so that 

 the infected ones have lived through hundreds instead of tens of 

 miles before they dropped, and have thus surmounted the barrier 

 of desert and of sea by which Europe was formerly protected. 

 No longer does cholera necessarily sneak round by Russia and 

 the Caucasus, infecting the various resting places on its way, and 

 setting out again as opportunity arises and as caravans and trav- 

 elers may serve. At one bound it is in Jiddah. Mecca becomes 

 a center of infection, and Red Sea ports distribute the disease to 

 Egypt and the south of Europe. 



Ordinary traffic can be watched, and by medical inspection 

 cases of disease can be picked out and isolated ; but with a sudden 

 crowding of sixty thousand people devoid of all sanitary knowl- 

 edge into a country ill equipped with sanitary appliances, gov- 

 erned by rulers whose chief principle and guide is a fatalistic 

 trust in the will of Allah, the problem is complicated in a high 

 degree. 



It must not be forgotten that the spread of cholera is not en- 

 tirely due to the infection carried by those who are attacked. No 



