o surmount. They had guessed its progress by the
illumination from, the blazing villages; they had heard its salvos of
artillery, on its arrival at North Aa; but since then, all had been dark
and mournful again, hope and fear, in sickening alternation, distracting
every breast. They knew that the wind was unfavorable, and at the dawn of
each day every eye was turned wistfully to the vanes of the steeples. So
long as the easterly breeze prevailed, they felt, as they anxiously stood
on towers and housetops; that they must look in vain for the welcome
ocean. Yet, while thus patiently waiting, they were literally starving;
for even the misery endured at Harlem had not reached that depth and
intensity of agony to which Leyden was now reduced. Bread, malt-cake,
horseflesh, had entirely disappeared; dogs, cats, rats, and other vermin,
were esteemed luxuries: A small number of cows, kept as long as possible,
for their milk, still remained; but a few were killed from day to day;
and distributed in minute proportions, hardly sufficient to support life
among the famishing population. Starving wretches swarmed daily around
the shambles where these cattle were slaughtered, contending for any
morsel which might fall, and lapping eagerly the blood as it ran along
the pavement; while the hides; chopped and boiled, were greedily
devoured. Women and children, all day long, were seen searching gutters
and dunghills for morsels of food, which they disputed fiercely with the
famishing dogs. The green leaves were stripped from the trees, every
living herb was converted into human food, but these expedients could not
avert starvation. The daily mortality was frightful infants starved to
death on the maternal breasts, which famine had parched and withered;
mothers dropped dead in the streets, with their dead children in their
arms. In many a house the watchmen, in their rounds, found a whole family
of corpses, father, mother, and children, side by side, for a disorder
called the plague, naturally engendered of hardship and famine, now came,
as if in kindness, to abridge the agony of the people. The pestilence
stalked at noonday through the city, and the doomed inhabitants fell like
grass beneath its scythe. From six thousand to eight thousand human
beings sank before this scourge alone, yet the people resolutely held
out--women and men mutually encouraging each other to resist the entrance
of their foreign foe--an evil more horrible than pest or