Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 September 1878 — The Yellow-Fever Panic at the South How It Affects Railroad Travel. [ARTICLE]

The Yellow-Fever Panic at the South How It Affects Railroad Travel.

The Philadelphia Timet ot a recent date gives the following account of the traveling experiences in the South of a gentleman connected with a well-known shoe house of that city: He went there two months ago to sell goods In Middle Tennessee and Aikbama, where be had an expurtence ;on quarantined railroads which he believes he has cause to remember. Once a man gets on a train, there la no telling where he will leave ft Quarantine officers boaj-d the cars on some railroads at every Sta tlon, to find if there are any passengers from New Orleans, Memphis, Grenada or other point* where disease is raging. .If any are found, they are hustled off in short order and commanded to steer clear ot th* towns. In hl* experienc* passenger* were not allowed to get off the care in many Instances, and were carried sometimes nearly a hundred miles lieyond their destination. ” To what road were your experience* chiefly confined (” the writer atked him yesterday. “On the Alabama Central and the Mobile & Ohio. The train on which 1 traveled on the Mobile & Ohio Road ran from Mobile to Tupelo without stopping to allow pkssengers to get anything to eat. It was a twenty hours’ ride. The last meal we got was at Mobile About four o’clock in the afternoon. It was twelve o’clock the next day before we reached Tupelo and took our next meal. I was on my way home at this time, and my intention waste change cars at Corinth, directly above Tupelo, and go straight to Louisville. It was the short and„direct route. But when we reached Corinth it was quarantined against us. and no passenger* were allowed to get on. I had to go on to Union City, which I* almost on a parallel line with Louisville, tint away to the ircst. From that place 1 traveled southeast to Nashville, and from Nashville northwest to Louisville. This was the most circuitous route it is possible to find, but it'wi* the only way by which I could reach my destination. Refugees are scattered all through Middle Tennessee and sorthern Alabama. People from Memphis, Grenada, New Orleans and all the other places where yellow fever is raging may be found lu hut* and farm-houses and towns in the mountains east and west of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. “Tlw railroads which are quarantined so far are the Mississippi Central, the Mobile & Ohio, tlie Memphis & Louisville, the Memphis Char estoti, the lion Moantain, the Alabama & Chattanooga, and the Alabama Central. The Mississippi Central is quarantined at every iKjint. It runs north and south near the Mississippi River, and through or adjacent to all those places where yellow fever is now raging—Vicksburg, Canton, Grenada, Memphis and other points. The next, great road running north and south is the Mobile &Ohio, farther east. It was this road and the Alabama Central I traveled on most. “ I heard of a man from Vicksburg traveling on the Alabama Central who got off at Demopolis. A quarantine jofficer, finding where he was from, ordered Him to get on the train again, stating that he had instructions to shoot any man from yellow-fever districts who disobeyed. “ On the train with myself on the Mobile A Ohio, to Louisville, was a gentleman from Boston, who owned _a house in Memphis and spent part of the season there. He had got shut up in Little Rock., Ark., and had been two week* trying to get out of the place to go to Boston. He succeeded only by taking a circuitous land-route and finally slipping past the quarantine. “ Another passenger on this train told me of something I could not believe till I heard it verified by other*, and then I had to believe it. He stated that, about a week before, a train, on which were ten or twelve persons from Memphis, had been stopped by the quarantine officers of Little Rock about four miles out of town, and the whole party put off in a swampy place, with no shelter out that of an old hut. In this party was a child four months old. They remained four days there without anything to eat. When they appeared at the houses in the neighborhood, people would point their guns at them and order them to keep away. My first informant told me that on the fourth day he Induced a quarantine offleer to go out with him on an engine to carry food to the party. None of them had yellow fever. The quarantine officer, however, told them they must remain there seven days longer before they would be allowed to come Into town. “ Another case I was told of was also corroborated by others. When the lever first appeared in Memphis, a young lady from Little Rock, who had been visiting there, returned to her father’s, at Little Rock. In a few days it was found out she had come from Memphis, and the authorities made her leave the town. “ Refugees have flocked to the mountain districts of Northern Alabama and Middle Tennessee in large numbers. At Beersheba Springs, in Tennessee, where I passed a Sunday, 1 found about (XX) from New Orleans, Memphis and other points. At Blunt Springs, in Alabama, there were between 400 and 50o.” “Was there much suffering from scarcity of provisions in the towns you passed through?” “In Jackson, I understood they had been without butter for four dajs. In Nashville, the market dwindled down greatly. The country people are airaid to come into the towns through which there 1b any traffic from the yellow-fever sections, and that is one of the reasons the railroads are in some places ■o strictly quarantined.”