Q. Where did the plague strike, and when? In 1346, we heard rumors of a great pestilence in the Orient. Allow me to quote one account: "India was depopulated; Tartary, Mesopotamia, Syria, Armenia were covered with dead bodies; the Kurds fled in vain to the mountains. In Caramania and Caesarea none were left alive." Naturally, we in Europe assumed this distant plague could not affect us, until ships manned by dying sailors began arriving at Italian ports. In a Flemish chronicle, I read the following: "In January 1348, three galleys put in at Genoa, horribly infected. When the Genoese saw how suddenly they infected others, the ships were driven forth by burning arrows and catapults. Thus, they were scattered from port to port." In this way the contamination spread, and within the next two years it passed over all the land, even to the far North.