or flee or escape from them, although they dumped as many of the bodies as they could into the sea. And soon the rotting corpses tainted the air and poisoned the water supply, and the stench was so overwhelming that hardly one in several thousand was in a position to flee the remains of the Tarter [Mongol] army. Moreover, one infected man could carry the poison to others, and infect people and places with the disease by look alone. No on knew, or could discover, a means of defense."
             The plague ravaged the city of Kaffa. As it gripped the city, the Italians fled to the sea on their boats. The rats carrying Yersinia pestis went along with them.
             The arrival of Yersinia pestis in Europe is a well-documented event. Harpur's, Revelations (page 60) states that in October 1347, a merchant ship entered the port of Messina, Sicily from the Crimea. Oarsmen who were dying were navigating the ship, and the rest of the crew was already dead and decomposing, or dying. Historian James Harpur wrote:
             "When the Messinians were lifting the corpses off the vessel, they noticed that the bodies had large black swellings in their armpits and groins. It was the ominous coloration of these lumps that would later give rise to the name of the Middle Ages' most deadly plague: the Black Death."
             Death and disease were no strangers to the population of the Middle Ages. Most towns were filth-ridden and sanitation was either ignored or unknown to them. But the plague "was a visitation of annihilating ferocity." It is estimated that some twenty million people died in Europe. In England, the population was reduced by one-third during the initial outbreak
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