Considered contagious except money

When a ship arrives in a quarantine port, from a suspected district, she is placed under the strictest surveillance. Attendants from the health-office are put on board: everything sent on shore has to undergo purification—if goods, by quarantine; if letters, by fumigation—in fact, everything is considered contagious except money, which is simply received in a vessel of water at the end of a pole by the people in the boats. On the other hand, everything from the shore, touched by anything or any body on the ship, is at once contaminated, and subject to the same quarantine. At Malta, this circumstance leads to many rows with the homeward bound passengers. Yaletta is famous for the manufacture of fine mittens and black lace; and when the overland steamers arrive, the quarantine harbour is filled with the boats of the dealers.

The articles are handed up in boxes at the ends of poles for inspection. The unthinking passengers turn them over to look at, and are immediately compelled to take the whole, because their touch has infected them. At Beyrout, speculators occasionally put off with Syrian curiosities—chaplets of olive-stones, from the Mount of Olives; cedar cones from Lebanon, and the like. On the occasion to which I now allude, a sharp touter had got ahead of his companions, and was beginning to treat with some passengers; selling the aforesaid wonders, and recommending dragomen. The engineer had, as is common, a little bird in his cabin, that was very tame, and used to be permitted to fly about the deck and rigging. It was loose on the morning of the arrival, and when the tooter came alongside, innocently perched on his shoulder. In an instant the quick-eyed guardians observed it. The poor tooter was declared compromised by the contact. He was hurried off to the lazaretto, in spite of his protestations and arguments, for ten days; and the engineer, as owner of the bird, was compelled to pay all the expenses of his incarceration.

The other case was more annoying still. In every lazaretto is a place called the parlatorio, at which the inmates may communicate with their friends. It is very like the grating used for the same purpose at our prisons. There is a double wall of bars, with a space of six or seven feet between them; and articles are pushed backwards and forwards on boards which run across communist bulgaria tour, in boxes fixed to poles. A person in quarantine received a visit from a friend on the first day of his confinement. Laden with treasures of travel, he was exhibiting some beautiful feathers to his friend, when a sudden puff of wind dispersed the collection, and by an evil chance blew one between the bars into the bosom of his innocent visitor.

The unfortunate weight

The unfortunate weight was directly condemned. All egress was denied him; he was told that, of all things, feathers were peculiarly susceptible of plague; and he had to join his friend for the whole term of his imprisonment. In fine, the laws of quarantine appear to be the most rigid of any existing, and cannot by any influence or interest, be evaded. This is not so much to be wondered at when the various incomes derived from enforcing them are taken into consideration; and, indeed, this appears to be, at present, the sole cause of their continuance.

There was a large quantity of beasts of burden awaiting the turn-out—camels, horses, and donkeys. The boys who attended the latter were sad young scamps—little dusky chaps with nothing on but what seemed to be a long blue bedgown. When a stranger appeared, they caught their donkeys by the head, and backed them, all in a heap, against him. In vain the valet beat them furiously about the head, face, and naked legs. They only fell back for an instant, and then all returned to the charge again, shouting, “ I say, master—good jackass ! ” Somehow or another, I was hustled on to one of the donkeys—I am sure I don’t know how; I never chose one—and then we set off at a quick easy amble towards Alexandria.