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 Town 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 
town was suspended except at the 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 journals 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. 
