e homage the
wrath of an avenging Deity.

III. AEthiopia and Egypt have been stigmatized, in every age, as the
original source and seminary of the plague. In a damp, hot, stagnating
air, this African fever is generated from the putrefaction of animal
substances, and especially from the swarms of locusts, not less
destructive to mankind in their death than in their lives. The fatal
disease which depopulated the earth in the time of Justinian and his
successors, first appeared in the neighborhood of Pelusium, between the
Serbonian bog and the eastern channel of the Nile. From thence, tracing
as it were a double path, it spread to the East, over Syria, Persia, and
the Indies, and penetrated to the West, along the coast of Africa,
and over the continent of Europe. In the spring of the second year,
Constantinople, during three or four months, was visited by the
pestilence; and Procopius, who observed its progress and symptoms
with the eyes of a physician, has emulated the skill and diligence of
Thucydides in the description of the plague of Athens. The infection
was sometimes announced by the visions of a distempered fancy, and the
victim despaired as soon as he had heard the menace and felt the stroke
of an invisible spectre. But the greater number, in their beds, in the
streets, in their usual occupation, were surprised by a slight fever; so
slight, indeed, that neither the pulse nor the color of the patient
gave any signs of the approaching danger. The same, the next, or
the succeeding day, it was declared by the swelling of the glands,
particularly those of the groin, of the armpits, and under the ear; and
when these buboes or tumors were opened, they were found to contain a
_coal_, or black substance, of the size of a lentil. If they came to a
just swelling and suppuration, the patient was saved by this kind and
natural discharge of the morbid humor. But if they continued hard and
dry, a mortification quickly ensued, and the fifth day was commonly
the term of his life. The fever was often accompanied with lethargy or
delirium; the bodies of the sick were covered with black pustules or
carbuncles, the symptoms of immediate death; and in the constitutions
too feeble to produce an irruption, the vomiting of blood was followed
by a mortification of the bowels. To pregnant women the plague was
generally mortal: yet one infant was drawn alive from his dead mother,
and three mothers survived the loss of their infected ftus. Yo