consequence of the rude manner of living and the uncultivated
state of the earth, influences which peculiarly favour the origin
of severe diseases. Now we need not go back to the earlier
centuries, for the fourteenth itself, before it had half expired,
was visited by five or six pestilences.

If, therefore, we consider the peculiar property of the plague,
that in countries which it has once visited it remains for a long
time in a milder form, and that the epidemic influences of 1342,
when it had appeared for the last time, were particularly
favourable to its unperceived continuance, till 1348, we come to
the notion that in this eventful year also the germs of plague
existed in Southern Europe, which might be vivified by
atmospherical deteriorations; and that thus, at least in part, the
Black Plague may have originated in Europe itself. The corruption
of the atmosphere came from the East; but the disease itself came
not upon the wings of the wind, but was only excited and increased
by the atmosphere where it had previously existed.

This source of the Black Plague was not, however, the only one;
for far more powerful than the excitement of the latent elements
of the plague by atmospheric influences was the effect of the
contagion communicated from one people to another on the great
roads and in the harbours of the Mediterranean. From China the
route of the caravans lay to the north of the Caspian Sea, through
Central Asia, to Tauris. Here ships were ready to take the
produce of the East to Constantinople, the capital of commerce,
and the medium of connection between Asia, Europe, and Africa.
Other caravans went from India to Asia Minor, and touched at the
cities south of the Caspian Sea, and, lastly, from Bagdad through