Holmes County Republican. [volume] (Millersburg, Holmes Co., O. [Ohio]) 1870-1895, 1874-02-19
FAMINE IN INDIA.
WHAT 1T MEANS--A NARRATIVE BY
AN NEYE-WiTNESS.

FAMINE IN INDIA.
WHAT IT MEANS--A NARRATIVE BY
ANEyE-WiTNESS.
Late advices by cable from Cal
cuttu announce the existence of the
dreaded famine in Bengal and a
large number of deaths. What a
famine in India is like is pictured
in a letter to the London Times of
the 18th ult., from an old resident
os India:
In 1888 a grievous famine pre-
vailed over southern India, extend
ing nearly from Madras to Cuttack
some 100 miles of coast Notice
had been given of its approach. but
the voice of warning was unheeded,
so that when the crisis arrived the
Government found itself taken by
surprise, amounting, it may be fairly
said, to panic. In the presence of
so terrible an emergency, there was
every willingness to do all that could
be accomplished to save live. Nei
ther public nor private charity was
wanting throughout the length and
breadth of the field of suffering; but
it was all too late. Wild theories of
the most unwise description then
made themselves heard such as
forcing the sale of rice at a fixed
rate, thus alarming the great grain
dealers of India, and tending to
check those vast operations upon
the increased activity of which,
stimulated by gain, the supply Of
millions depended. As for any gov
ernment undertaking to feed its
whole population, the notion has
only to be examined for momelt
to be utterly discarded. Still, the
idea of coercing the grain dealers is
one quite in accordance with the
popular feeling in India, as it was at
the time am referring to with too
many of our own officers, who sure
ly ought to have been better in
| formed.
The eyes of the authorities at
Madras were, however, only open to
the disaster before them when made
conscious of the arrival of thousands
of starving wretches day by day, to
whom there was but the alternative
of immediate relief or death. But
long prior to this, on the Great
Northern Road, hundreds of miles
from Madras, there might have been
noticed, night and day, a stream of
prilgrims as it were, of the most sad
description. vending their weary
way southwarl-not paupers, but
cultivators, artisans, weavers-with
their families and some poor re-
mains of their household goods in
covered carts, on bullocks, or on
their own back. Delicate and re-
fined women were there, and child
ren whose classic forms and ways it
had been a delight too look upon,
until with skinny limbs and protu-
berant trunks, they trotted along,
often to their graves, by the road
side, though, in numerous cases, the
parents, in utter despair, and rathe:
than see them die before their own
eyes, sold the female portion to
wretches who conveyed them to Hy-
derbad, the Moslem capital of the
Deccan.
A little later, and that same
Northern Road, as it approached
Madras, presented still sadder
sight-its surface strewn with dead
bodies lying half unburied, arms
and legs protruding above the soil,
and the famishing village dogs tos-
sing about the torn remnants of
those who had become the prey of
the jackals. A hideous sight it was
to see these creatures dragging by
their long tresses the heads of those
precious one who a few days before
had been as centres of hope to their
households.
Travelling that road it was often
hard to distinguish between the dy
ing and the dead-between those
who had fallen to rise no more in this
life. Strange scenes presented them
selves at that time. Famine was
made accountable for all deaths, as
of a well-dressed man lying near a
village with his throat cut, it was
declared that, having fallen asleep,
the dogs had seized upon HIM and
made the wound we saw.
Nor was it in small towns and
villages only that such extermina
ton was going forward. At Masul
ipatam, the very capital OF that part
of the country, carriers for the dead
went their rounds every morning,
conveying their loads of carcases
from the streets to large open pits.
left in possession of birds and beasts
Of prey-the former SO gorged as to
be unable to take wing even at the
approach of the living.
But fate worse than that of the
dead was often the portion of the
living; for an order had gone forth
to relieve none at the public expense
who could be put to the coarse and
humiliating labor of tank-digging.
1t was heart breaking sight to see
the tenderly nurtured daughters of
respectable castles and decent SUBJ
jected to the authority of gross na-
tive overseers, against whom they
could have but scanty protection or
redress.
Truly, famine under such aspects
as this is sore judgment. Nor
was that last sad evidence of extrem-
est suffering said to be wanting. HUI
man flesh was reported to have sat
isfied the hunger of some; but of
this 4 cannot personally testify;
amid all the other horrors, it
might or might not have been
Witnessed.
To aggravate the miseries of that