An account of the empire of Marocco, and the districts of Suse and Tafilelt; compiled from miscellaneous observations made during a long residence in, and various journies through, these countries. To which is added an account of shipwrecks on the western coast of Africa, and an interesting account of Timbuctoo, the great emporium of Central AfricaJackson, James Grey
History
An account of the empire of Marocco, and the districts of Suse and Tafilelt; compiled from miscellaneous observations made during a long residence in, and various journies through, these countries. To which is added an account of shipwrecks on the western coast of Africa, and an interesting account of Timbuctoo, the great emporium of Central Africa
Jackson, James Grey
Morocco
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 remains, I was informed that in one
village, which contained six hundred inhabitants, four persons only
had escaped the ravage. Other villages, which had contained four
or five hundred, had only seven or eight survivors left to relate
the calamities they had suffered. Families which had retired to
the country to avoid the infection, on returning to town, when all
infection had apparently ceased, were generally attacked, and died;
a singular instance of this kind happened at Mogodor, where, after
the mortality had subsided, a corps of troops arrived from the city of
Terodant, in the province of Suse, where the plague had been raging,
and had subsided; these troops, after remaining three days at Mogodor,
were attacked with the disease, and it raged exclusively among them
for about a month, during which it carried off two-thirds of their
original number, one hundred men; during this interval the other
inhabitants of the town were exempt from the disorder, though these
troops were not confined to any particular quarter, many of them
having had apartments in the houses of the inhabitants of the town.
The destruction of the human species in the province of Suse was
considerably greater than elsewhere; Terodant, formerly the metropolis
of a kingdom, but now that of Suse, lost, when the infection was
at its height, about eight hundred each day: the ruined, but still
extensive city of Marocco,[149] lost one thousand each day; the
populous cities of Old and New Fas diminished in population twelve
or fifteen hundred each day,[150] insomuch, that in these extensive
cities, the mortality was so great, that the living having not time
to bury the dead, the bodies were deposited or thrown altogether
into large holes, which, when nearly full, were covered over with
earth. All regulations in matters of sepulture before observed were
now no longer regarded; things sacred and things prophane had now
lost their distinction, and universal despair pervaded mankind. Young,
healthy, and robust persons of full stamina, were, for the most part,
attacked first, then women and children, and lastly, thin, sickly,
emaciated, and old people.
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