nd they were accordingly compelled to work for
themselves, performing personally the menial offices of their
respective families.
172
[Footnote 133: At this time I received from Marocco a caravan
of many camel-loads of bees-wax, in serrons containing 200 lbs.
each; I sent for workmen to place them one upon another, and
they demanded one dollar per serron for so moving them.]

The country being now depopulated, and much of the territory
without owners, vast tribes of Arabs emigrated from their abodes in
the interior of Sahara, and took possession of the country
contiguous to the river Draha, as well as many districts in Suse;
and, in short, settling themselves, and pitching their tents
wherever they found a fertile country with little or no population.

The symptoms of this plague varied in different patients, the
variety of age and constitution gave it a like variety of
appearance and character. Those who enjoyed perfect health were
suddenly seized with head-aches and inflammations; the tongue and
throat became of a vivid red, the breath was drawn with difficulty,
and was succeeded by sneezing and hoarseness; when once settled in
the stomach, it excited vomitings of black bile, attended with
excessive torture, weakness, hiccough, and convulsion. Some were
seized with sudden shivering, or delirium, and had a sensation of
such intense inward heat, that they threw off their clothes, and
would have walked about naked in quest of water wherein to plunge
themselves. Cold water was eagerly resorted to by the unwary and
imprudent, and proved fatal to those who indulged in its momentary
relief. Some had one, two, or more buboes, which formed themselves,
173 and became often as large as a walnut, in the course of a day;
others had a similar number of carbuncles; others had both buboes
and carbuncles, which generally appeared in the groin, under the
arm, or near the breast. Those who were affected[134] with a
shivering, having no buboe, carbuncle, spots, or any other exterior
disfiguration, were invariably carried off in less than twenty-four
hours, and the body of the deceased became quickly putrified, so
that it was indispensably necessary to bury it a few hours after
dissolution. It is remarkable, that the birds of the air fled away
from