168 THE PLAGUE.

dred, then to eight hundred, and so on until it disappeared. Whatever recourse was had to medicine and to physicians was unavaiHng ; so that such expedients were at length totally relinquished, and the people, overpowered by this terrible scourge, lost all hopes of surviving it.

Whilst it raged in the town of Mogodor, a small village, Diabety situated about two miles south-east of that place, remained uninfected, although the communication was open between them : on the thirtyburth day however, after its first appearance at Mogodor, this village was discovered to be infected, and the disorder raged with great violence, making dreadful havock among the human species for twenty-one days, carrying off, during that period, one hundred persons out of one hundred and thirty-three, the original population of the village, before the plague visited it ; none died after this, and those who were infected, recovered in the course of a month or two, some losing an eye, or the use of a leg or an arm.

Many similar circumstances might be here adduced relative to the numerous and populous villages dispersed through the extensive Shelluh province of Haha, all which shared a similar or a worse fate. Travelling through this province shortly after the plague had exhausted itself, I saw many uninhabited ruins, which I had before witnessed as flourishing villages ; on making enquiry concerning the population of these dismal