Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 May 1875 — Afflictions in Turkey. [ARTICLE]

Afflictions in Turkey.

In addition to the famine, which is raging with unabated violence, Turkey is visited with another national affliction. A cattle disease is ravaging the flocks and herds all over the Empire, from Bagdad on the Tigris to the Adriatic coasts. At Scala Nova, in the province of Smyrna and in the vicinity of the Dardanelles, the small-pox among the sheep and pulmonary disease among the cattle have caused the loss of 50 per cent, of the former. A recent visitor to the plains of Troy remarked the skeletons of thousands of sheep lying on the ground. Reports from Smyrna state that vast flocks have been totally destroyed, and one letter tells of a shepherd who, stripped by the murrain of his entire flock, has become insane and takes out .to pasture a pocketful of white pebbles, which he fondly believes to be the fleecy tribe in the possession of which he was a few weeks ago comparatively rich. In the region around Adrianople 30 per cent, of the homed cattle and horses have been lost, and a much larger ratio of sheep. In the province of Gallipoli the horned catl tie are swept away by a disease which, in some localities, affects the bowels, in others the respiratory organs, but which seems to partake generally of a typhoid character. In the case of horses the disease affects the spine, and is very rapid in its action. In the district of Enos the sheep are affected by a lung disease, and the sanitary physician of Varna reports a like affection of the flocks in the Dobrudja, between the Danube and the Black Sea. It is painfully evident, says the Levant Herald, that throughout the whole length and breadth of the Empire pastoral industry is smitten by a visitation which must tell severely upon the economical condition of the country generally.