This year a pestilential disorder (wabá) broke out in certain parts of Hindústán, and gradually increased until it raged with great fury. This dreadful calamity arose in the parganas of the Panjáb. It reached to Lahore, and a great number of Muham-madans and Hindús lost their lives from it. It then proceeded towards Sirhind, and through the Doáb as far as Dehlí and the surrounding places. It destroyed many villages and parganas in that part of the country. When it was about to break out, a mouse would rush out of its hole as if mad, and striking itself against the door and the walls of the house, would expire. If, immediately after this signal, the occupants left the house and went away to the jungle, their lives were saved; if otherwise, the inhabitants of the whole village would be swept away by the hand of death. If any person touched the dead, or even the clothes of a dead man, he also could not survive the fatal con­tact. The effect of the epidemic was comparatively more severe upon the Hindús. In Lahore its ravages were so great, that in one house ten or even twenty persons would die, and their sur­viving neighbours, annoyed by the stench, would be compelled to desert their habitations. Houses full of the dead were left locked, and no person dared to go near them through fear of his life. It was also very severe in Kashmír, where its effect was so great that (as an instance) a darwesh, who had performed the last sad offices of washing the corpse of a friend, the very next day shared the same fate. A cow, which had fed upon the grass on which the body of the man was washed, also died. The dogs, also, which ate the flesh of the cow, fell dead upon the spot. In Hindústán no place was free from this visitation, which continued to devastate the country for a space of eight years. ^{* *}