It is supposed that the pest had been imported in bales of goods from Smyrna into Holland in 1663. From thence it crossed over to London, where the first deaths were reported about the first of December in 1664. Toward the end of that month another death occurred in the same house, but during the following six weeks no new case developed. About the middle of February, however, a person died of the plague in another house. From that time only occasional cases of plague were reported, although the weekly mortality was rapidly rising and was greatly in excess of the usual rate. Thus, while the ordinary weekly mortality ranged from two hundred and forty to three hundred, this was gradually increased, so that in the third week in January it had risen to four hundred and seventy-four. After a slight remission, the mortality again rose, so that early in May plague cases were reported more frequently. It soon became evident that the plague, as in Milan in 1630, had slowly but surely gained a firm foothold. The increased mortality was undoubtedly due to unsuspected plague cases of either the pneumonic or the septicemic type. During May, and especially during the hot weather in June, the disease continued to spread. At the same time, the panic-stricken people began to leave the city in large numbers. In July the condition was truly deplorable. To quote Defoe: “London might well be said to be all in tears; the mourners did not go about the streets, indeed, for nobody put on black or made a formal dress of mourning for their nearest friends; but the voice of mourning was truly heard in the streets. The shrieks of women and children at the windows and doors of their houses, where their dearest relations were perhaps dying, or just dead, were so frequent to be heard as we passed in the streets, that it was enough to pierce the stoutest heart in the world to hear them. Tears and lamentations were seen almost in every house, especially in the first part of the visitation; for toward the latter end men’s hearts were hardened, and death was so always before their eyes, that they did not so much concern themselves for the loss of their friends, expecting that themselves should be summoned the next hour.” London at this time had a population of nearly half a million. The deaths from the plague during 1665, as reported in the bills of mortality, are 68,596. By far the larger number of these occurred in August, September and October. The weekly mortality from the disease rose from a few cases in May to over 7,000 per week in September. It may, indeed, be close to the truth when Defoe states that 3,000 were said to have been buried in one night.