A HINDOO DEVOTEE.
It is estimated that ninety-five per cent. of the pilgrims are poor, and perform the journey on foot; and some of the pious devotees prostrate themselves at every third, fifth, or tenth step. Many of them die on the road, and after their arrival at Pooree the mortality is frightful. This is partly owing to the fact that a hundred thousand people are often crowded into a city that has a resident population of less than a third that number, and no effort is made to keep it clean. The great festival occurs in the rainy season, so that the attendance is largest at the very time when it should be least. The drainage is the worst that could be imagined, and the stench that arises is horrible in the extreme. Sometimes there are hundreds of deaths in a day, but the vacancies created by the losses are quickly made up by fresh arrivals.
Another cause of serious illness and frequent death is a religious observance connected with the worship of the idol. It is the custom to carry cooked rice into the presence of the god, and it immediately becomes so sanctified by his presence that it destroys all distinctions of caste. All classes can eat it together, and the richest may sit down by the side of the most humble in the presence of this holy food. Not a grain of it must be thrown away, and thus it happens that it is often kept for several days before it is eaten. When fresh it does no harm, but after a day or two it putrefies, and is a sure producer of disease.
There is hardly a year when cholera does not appear among the pilgrims to Juggernaut, in consequence of the bad food they eat. The true Asiatic cholera had its origin here, and it is noticeable that every recurrence of the epidemic has had its beginning in the festivals connected with some of the Hindoo forms of worship.
The great epidemic of cholera (in 1817) began at Juggernaut, and was carried across India and thence up the Persian Gulf to Bussorah, where 18,000 persons died in eighteen days; it then moved on through the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers to the shores of the Mediterranean, where it stopped. In 1826 there was another epidemic, arising in the same locality; it was the first to reach Europe and America, and arrived in the latter country in the spring of 1832, in a ship that brought some Irish emigrants to Quebec. It ascended the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes, and entered the United States at Detroit, whence it spread over the country and caused many thousands of deaths.
