ndia,
where three millions of human beings died in a few years. I remember a
small house in the poor quarter of Bombay which I visited in 1902. The
authorities had given orders that when any one died of the plague a red
cross should be painted beside the doorpost of the house. And this small
house alone had forty crosses.

And now in 1906 the plague had reached Seistan. From the roof of the
house where I lived with some English officers, we could see the
unfortunate people carrying out their dear ones to the grave. We could
see them wash the bodies in a pool outside the walls, and then resume
their sad procession. The population of the small town seemed in danger
of extermination, and at length the people fled in hundreds. An English
doctor and his assistant wished to help them by means of serum
injections, but the Mohammedan clergy, out of hatred of the Europeans,
made the people believe that it was the Christians who had let loose the
disease over the country. Deluded and excited, the natives gathered
together and made an attack on the British Consulate, but were repulsed.
Then they went back to their huts to die helplessly.

They tried as far as possible to keep the cases of death secret and
carried out the corpses at night. Soon the deaths were so frequent that
it was impossible to dig proper graves. Those, therefore, who thought of
the hyaenas and jackals, digged their own graves beforehand. Processions
round the mosque of the town were instituted, with black flags and a
sacrificial goat at the head, and the mercy of Allah was implored. But
Allah did not hear, and infection was spread among the people who
flocked together to the processions.

Under the microscope the deadly microbes appear only as quite small
elongated dots, though they are magnified twelve hundred times. They
live in the blood of rats, whose parasites communicate the infection to
human beings. It is therefore most important to exterminate all rats
when an outbreak of plague occurs. The disease is terribly infectious.
In a house where the angel of death descends and carries off a victim,
all the inmates die one after another. Stupidly blind, the natives did
not understand what was good for them, and could not be induced to burn
infected clothes and the whole contents of a plague-stricken house. They
would not part with their worldly goods and preferred to perish with
them.

In one house dwelt a poor carpenter with his wife, two half-grown sons