3-071-280 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Cholera in Egypt: its source and cause - village of fishermen on Fly Island, Lake Menzaleh, 1883. Engraving from a sketch by 'our Special Artist, Mr. Schonberg...Much anxiety is felt about the recent outbreak of cholera in the neighbourhood of Damietta and along the shore of Lake Menzaleh, near the north-eastern outlet of the Nile...measures have been taken to cut off all communication between the province of Damietta and the rest of Egypt...Lake Menzaleh, which is about fifty miles long and twenty- five broad, has the Suez Canal to the east of it, and the railway from Damietta, parallel with a branch of the Nile, on the western side. The small islands of this lake are the abode of miserable fishermen and their families, dwelling like savages, in huts mostly constructed of reeds; but there are wooden storehouses for keeping the dried fish. The process of drying in the sun, however, does not prevent quantities of the fish from becoming half-putrid, and giving out an abominable stench. Here, we should think are to be found the "sources and causes" of the present visitation of cholera in that part of Egypt'. From "Illustrated London News", 1883.