acked by it in 1349; Sweden,
indeed, not until November of that year, almost two years after its
eruption in Avignon. Poland received the plague in 1349, probably from
Germany, if not from the northern countries; but in Russia it did not
make its appearance until 1351, more than three years after it had
broken out in Constantinople. Instead of advancing in a northwesterly
direction from Tauris and from the Caspian Sea, it had thus made the
great circuit of the Black Sea, by way of Constantinople, Southern and
Central Europe, England, the northern kingdoms and Poland, before it
reached the Russian territories; a phenomenon which has not again
occurred with respect to more recent pestilences originating in Asia.

We have no certain measure by which to estimate the ravages of the black
plague. Let us go back for a moment to the fourteenth century. The
people were yet but little civilized. Human life was little regarded;
governments concerned not themselves about the numbers of their
subjects, for whose welfare it was incumbent on them to provide. Thus,
the first requisite for estimating the loss of human life--namely, a
knowledge of the amount of the population--is altogether wanting.

Cairo lost daily, when the plague was raging with its greatest violence,
from ten thousand to fifteen thousand, being as many as, in modern
times, great plagues have carried off during their whole course. In
China, more than thirteen millions are said to have died; and this is in
correspondence with the certainly exaggerated accounts from the rest of
Asia. India was depopulated. Tartary, the Tartar kingdom of Kaptschak,
Mesopotamia, Syria, Armenia, were covered with dead bodies; the Kurds
fled in vain to the mountains. In Caramania and Caesarea, none was left
alive. On the roads, in the camps, in the caravansaries, unburied bodies
were seen; and a few cities only remained, in an unaccountable manner,
free. In Aleppo, five hundred died daily; twenty-two thousand people and
most of the animals were carried off in Gaza within six weeks. Cyprus
lost almost all its inhabitants; and ships without crews were often seen
in the Mediterranean, as afterward in the North Sea, driving about and
spreading the plague wherever they went on shore. It was reported to
Pope Clement, at Avignon, that throughout the East, probably with the
exception of China, twenty-three million eight hundred and forty
thousand people had fallen victims to the plague.

Luebeck