Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 February 1879 — The Plague-Stricken Territory. [ARTICLE]

The Plague-Stricken Territory.

The direction taken by the Russian epidemic makes the blow doubly severe, several of the chief commercial centers in Eastern Russia being among the nowquarantined towns on the Lower Volga. Saratoff, about 400 miles above Astrakhan, is a perfect nest of factories, being, indeed, the Manchester of the Eastern provinces. Samara, on the easternmost bend of the river, a little higher up, is the center of the fastgrowing traue in “kumyss,” or fermented mare’s milk, so largely used for medicinal purposes. The traffic of Astrakhan itself, in furs and stuffs of every kind, is too well known to require demonstration, while the cluster of German colonies in the Sarepta district are equally productive on a smaller scale. That the Government fully appreciates the value of the Volga trade is shown by the immense cost and labor expended qpon the new railways which have lately united Saratoff and Tsaritzin with the network of lines centering in Moscow. The outbreak of such a pestilence only five or six weeks before the opening of the river navigation, and so near the end of the cold weather, which is usually found to be its surest antidote, is undoubtedly a very serious calamity