The Express.
London, England, 1861-04-19 00:00:00

THE FAMINE.

The Bombay journals of March 27 and Calcutta
journals of March 18, received this morning, con-
tain further afflicting accounts of the famine.
In the Delhi district thousands are dying. It is
stated that many who manage to escape from
starvation fall victims to crime. Frequent and
terrible murders are occurring daily. From Um-
balla we hear (March 16) that there had been a
good fall of rain which lasted three days. There
bad also been a little rain at Rawul Pindee and
Bareilly. Throughout the Central Doab the dis-
tress was universal. A Delhi contemporary makes
the following observations :
The pre sure of the prevailing distress, and the apprehen-
sion pretty widely felt by natives a the continuance of
the famine, and a subsequent visitation of a pestilence or
epidemic, has given rise to a sentiment which is, to say
the least, if nothing else, poetic. It is, that the souls of
the innocents who were murdered at Cawnpore, Delhi,
onehjahaspore, and other places, during the mutiny, bare
been eryiai out for vengeance on their murderers, and their
cries have at last been heard in the court of Heaven, from
which the lei has gone forth for the levy of that retribu-
ties from the bloodstained land which no human arm has
yet takes.

Those among the natives who are given to reflect on
wain evente, cannot fail to be struck with the present
aspect of affairs. In most of the places in the North-Wait
where three years ago English blood was treacherously and
mercilessly shed, the poor of the land are fed and sup-
ported in thousands at the expenditure of lace of rupees,
by the survivors of the very race whose extermination was
attempted by treachery and asmasination so short a time
ago. From this they may learn a lesson in the tenets of
the Christian faith.

While contributions are pouring in from all
parts of the country to relieve the sufferings of the
people in the Punjab and the North-west Pro-
vinces, we have the sad tidings of the same dreadful
calamity destroying hundreds of human beings in
South Travancore. In letters dated between the
20th of February and the 4th instant, published
by a Madras contemporary, we observe it stated
that the whole of the cultivation this year has
failed in consequence of the drought, while there
is not a paddy field in which the people could find
employment. It appears that in October last, a
fair quantity of rain fell in that part of the coun-
try, but whole fields of paddy were destroyed by
caterpillars, and cholera carried off hundreds, thus
adding to the distress by famine. Hundreds of
children, it is stated, are left orphans, and many a
widow bad to sell everything to save herself and
infants from starvation. The Rev. J. Cox thus
describes the state of the people:

This district is about 35 miles hag and 20 wide, contain.
log, according to • former opuses, 150,000 people. The
famine is more felt in the 'outliers puts of this district.
Great bunches of the people there are so weak as to be
scarcely able to walk. They are so thin that their bows
project. They have been subsisting on roots and leaves till
them have hilted, and they have sold little things they had
shoot their houses sod parts of their houses, and tress from
their rodeos, till these were exhausted ; and inlay have
even sold their children for seep a sum as a quarter of a
tepee and less. Many whom I knew some months ago are
sow so shrunk that I mu scarcely reoognies them.
The commissioner of the Agra division had re-
ported to government that the distress there was
not on the increase ; that there los by no means
been anything like a total failure of spring or
rubbee crops in Agra or Muttra ; that a consider-
able yield of grain would be the produce of this
year ; that large imports of grain from the east-
ward were daily arriving ; that there had been rain
in some of the districts, besides the Agra divi-
sion, whose harvests were in jeopardy three weeks
previously ; and that these circumstances would
probably prevent a further rise in the price
of food, and might be expected to lower it consi-
derably. He maintains that nothing at all com-
parable to the distress and suffering felt in 1837-38
exists at present, and that nothing which can be
correctly called a famine will add to the present
I agricultural distress, unless the periodical rains of
the coming season are withheld or are greatly
deficient in quantity. The Lieut.-Governor of the
North-West is not disposed, however, to be san-
guine as to the produce of the coming spring har-
vest, because an immense breadth of land must
have remained unsown, and the seed put into the
ground failed to germinate. His honour believes
that the little rain that has fallen may, in some
measure, have improved the prospects of the
season.

A very general subject of interest throughout
India is the supply of Indian cotton to England.
"The amount of talk on the subject," says the
Bombay Guyette/ " in Calcutta, Bombay, and other
places especially interested, can be less only than
that in Manchester. In India, however, as in
Manchester, it is 'vox et prueteres nihil.' The
capabilities of India to produce cotton are admitted
to be unbounded ; and the means of production
afforded directly to the ryota are all that is re-
quired to realise a supply equal to any demand."
The amalgamation committee arestill at work in
Calcutta and its proceedings leak out; but the
Indian army is full of anxious expectation as to its
fats

The Civil Finanos Commission, now sitting in
Calcutta, is astonishing the country with the mag-
nitude of its retrenchments. Collectorate and de-
puty-collectorate offices are to be abolished by the
wbolenale.

Orders had been issued for &census of all British-
born persons residing in India, to be taken on the
Bth of April.
The Governor-General has ordered a return to
be made, for the term ending 30th proximo, of all
the presses working throughout India on that date,
and of the publications issued from them.
The ulterior object of the French ships of war at
present in the Red Sea is believed to be the occu-
pation of a suitable port which may serve as a
coaling station, and otherwise facilitate the exten-
sion of the national influence in that quarter, and
especially over Abyssinia.

knee our last savior very little business has been done
is ear export market. Our import market for cotton re-
miss unchanged since last advioss. We now quote for
Dbeilere, new, raper 136 to 137 ; Broach. new, rupees 145
to 146 ; and Oornrawuttee, new, rupees 132 to 134.

Freights—to Liverpool, 3/. b. 61 ; London, 31. ; and
Chia, rupees 13 to 14 per candy.
The moony market very tight. The following is a list of
quotations :—Losideis (Credit). 6 months' sight, 2s. 14d.
ditto Documents, 6 months' sight, 2s. lid. ; ditto Bank
Rates, 6 months' eight, 2s. 1 7.16 d. to 10. ; Calcutta, 3
days sight, 981 per cent. pram. ; Madras, 30 days' sight,
97 per cent. prem. ; Chins., 60 days' sight, napes, 212 per
106 dole.

(1111UTICIell ITLIIZIWIIL)
ITALY.
GARIBALDI AND TRANCE.

PARIS, FRIDAY.

The Moslem+, in its bulletin of today, gives an
account of yesterday's sitting of the Chamber of
Deputies at Turin, in which the following particu-
lars are contained :

Garibaldi &mimed the ministry of baring fomented
the fratricidal wax in Southern Italy.

The majority of the members protested against
this accusation.