A.D. 1610, plague showed itself in the suburbs of the city of Granada, to which place it soon extended, causing great mortality. The year following, it prevailed in various parts of Spain, and Constantinople suffered awfully from pestilence about the same time; it carried off 200,000 of the inhabitants. “Such clouds, or swarms, of grasshoppers,” says Short, “so plagued their city and country about, that they darkened the sun, and left not any green herb or leaf in all the country; they entered the bedchambers; they were nearly as large as dormice, and had red wings.” The year following, 1611, Goelenius writes, in his account of the plague which raged at Hesse and other parts of Germany, followed by a great pestilence among pigs and cattle in 1612, that a sudden and amazing quantity of spiders appeared; swarms of locusts laid waste the vegetable kingdom in Provence, tempests destroyed great numbers of shipping at sea, many dead bodies were drifted on the English shores as also on the shores of Holland, and a province, under the dominion of France, was nearly destroyed by inundation. The summer in England was hot and dry, and malignant fevers carried off great numbers. A.D. 1613, epidemic pestilence occurred in various parts of France; and in Montpelier there was a malignant fever, with livid spots and carbuncles. Riverius states, that one-third of those who were attacked with it died. At Lausanne, where pestilence raged with great violence, there was such an abundance of flies as was never remembered to have occurred previously,--“tanta ubique fuit muscarum copia, ut post hominum memoriam vix similis visa fuerit.” (Hildanus.) Pestilence also raged at Constantinople, where the physicians, supposing that the cats spread the contagion, advised the Emperor, Achmet I., to transport them to the desert island of Scutari. Spain, this year, suffered from malignant sore-throat, which raged with such severity, that it was considered to have been more fatal than in the year of the _garratillos_ (quinsy). The year following, the winter was very severe, the summer cold and wet, and the autumn variable. The most deadly small-pox laid waste Crete, Alexandria, Calabria, Turkey, Italy, Dalmatia, Venice, Germany, France, Poland, Flanders, Persia, and Asia; it prevailed also, with great severity, in England. In some of these countries, measles was also prevalent. The mortality from the natural small-pox, at that period, equalled in fatality the plague in its worst form. About this period, water was first brought by means of the New River to London by Sir Hugh Middleton. CHAPTER VI. FROM A.D. 1616 TO 1704.