Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II THE PLAGUE The Plague?The Means whereby it Spreads?Immunity of Europeans?When the Rats Begin to Die?The Belief of the Natives as to its Origin?Opinion of the Bombay Doctors?The Towers of Silence during the Pest?The Gathering of the Vultures even from Turkestan. IT is somewhat with fear and trembling that the traveller ventures into Southern India in these days of 1898,?not so much in fear of the plague as in dread of being quarantined in some impossible Indian village,?but if he is en route for Burma he must risk that, or waste three weeks in Ceylon waiting for a ship. So far this year, the pest has not broken out in the points to which we are going, Madura, Trichinopoly, Tanjore, and Madras, although there have been some few imported cases. It is, however, slowly creeping onward, and if it should enter Ceylon it would prove the total ruin of that island, as there would be no market for her tea. The pest does not, as a rule, attack Europeane. How it is carried from point to point is as yet a mystery. It is not epidemic but contagious. Many think that the mosquitoes are the vehicle, others lay it to the rats, and there is a premium offered forevery rat, dead or alive. Others believe that it is in the dust and mud and that the natives contract it through their feet. The wife of our Bombay consul suffered with it two years ago, and insists that she got it by inhaling the dust of the city. When one does succumb its work is short and sharp, and generally with one ending?death. Whole families have retired at -night apparently in perfect health, and have been found dead in the morning. Two years ago the people fled from Bombay by tens of thousands, and the population decreased from four hundred thousand to seventy thousand. The hotels were closed because there we…