A few words should be given here to the overland dissemination of the disease. Europe is not merely threatened by infected ships which may come from China, India, Eastern Africa or South America. The overland routes from China and India are fully as grave a source of danger. Indeed, as will be presently shown, these are the routes along which the great epidemics of cholera and plague have always traveled in the past. One of these great caravan routes leads from Lahore in Punjab through Afghanistan into the Russian province of Turkestan, where it meets the Trans-Caspian railway. This railway begins at Samarcand in Turkestan, and passes through Bokhara, Merv, Askabad and ends at Uzun Ada on the Caspian Sea opposite Baku. Early in 1899 an outbreak of the plague occurred near Samarcand, undoubtedly brought up from India. The precautions taken to prevent the spread were entirely successful, and although no accounts have been officially published as to the means employed, nevertheless it will be seen that the radical procedure employed by Loris Melikoff some twenty years ago was again resorted to. Inasmuch as the entire village was said to be afflicted it was surrounded by troops, and no one was allowed to enter or leave. The village and all that it contained was destroyed by fire. With this route open continually it is evident that fresh importation must be expected sooner or later. Apparently a new plague focus, independent of that in Yunnan and Hong Kong, has been recently discovered in Manchuria. The plague seems to have existed in this province for more than ten years under the name of Tarabagan plague, and is believed to be spread by a rodent, the Arctomis cobuc, which is subject to a hemorrhagic pneumonia. The presence of such an independent endemic focus in Manchuria indicates the possibility of the spread of the disease by caravan to Lake Baikal, and thence by the Siberian railroad to Russia. Indeed, the epidemic of pneumonic type which began July, 1899, at Kolobovka, in Astrakhan, while it may have been imported from Persia, might also owe its origin to the Mongolian focus. Russia, however, is not the only country endangered by the overland transmission of the disease. There are commercial highways which lead from Northwestern India through Baluchistan and Persia to the Caucasus, and through Turkey to Constantinople. Grave danger threatens from this source, and more especially from the cities along the Persian Gulf. Two important cities here are already infected, namely, Bushire, in Persia, and Bassorah on the Tigris, in Turkey. It would appear as if Turkey and Persia would escape with difficulty from a visitation of this dread disease.