The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1877-06-28

Inc means. 1t means actual starvation
and death to many thousands, If not mil
lions, of the people. 1t means the deci-
nation of households. 1t means sickness
and decrepitude for life to many surviv-
ors. 1t means the loss of property and
poverty for life to others. 1t means the
taking away of beasts of labor from
the farmer, and future untitled and fruit
less fields and consequent continued
scarcity in many locality.
But it is in its present aspects that peo-
pie have more to do. Let me take rap
i'll glance at the condition Of affairs to-
day. l will 90 to the pier in Madras,
which reaches out nearly a quarter OF
mile across the surf of the open roadstead.
Lying at anchor near the pier are more
than score of vessels, foreign and ma
tive, unloading bags of rice imported by
Government and by private parties for
the famine regions. All along the sandy
beach for mile are heaps of rice-bags,
piled sometimes fifteen to twenty feet
high. The beach is lined with famine
stricken wretches, who have come in
from hundreds of villages near and far
for the chance of obtaining the little rice
which scatters out of the holes and rents
of the poorly made bags. Here and
there one has coarse sieve and shovels
up the sand and sits it for grains of rice
as for grains of gold. There are some
half-clad mothers with their hollow
checked, sunken eyed babes or young
children sitting astride Of their left hip,
the mother throwing her left arm around
the child to keep it in place, while with
the right she gathers the few kernels Of
rice, her only hope of sustenance. walk
up the Esplanade and through the native
town. Begging from door to door of the
more wealthy people, or crouching by the
side of the street in their squalid famish-
ing, l see hundreds of others who have
flocked in from the districts in the hope
of saving their lives. Iapproach the hos
pital. Hosts of those affected by every
disease brought on by starvation are beg
cling for admission There is a poor fell
low tottering in so weak that he has just
stumbled and fallen on the gate-sill, and
knocked out all his front teeth. Well,
he will not want them long. take the
railroad to Bombay passing through the
Cuddapah district, containing 5000, 900
people, find the direst distress. Kur-
nool is no better, and cholera raging.
Bellary is still worse; within mile of
this station it is reported that 100 bodies
of those who have died by the way Of
starvation aud cholera are poisoning the
atmosphere for the living. At Sholapore,
in the Bombay Presidency, twenty-five
are reported as dying in day, while in
that district 100000 people, We are told,
have left their villages to wander in
search of food, under the delusion that
the famine is circumscribed, and that
abundance could be had elsewhere. But
the elsewhere" they cannot find.
There is another singular evidence of
the severity of the famine. 1t is this :
Gang-robbers on the highway and in the
country villages, usually called "Dacoi-
tees" in India are becoming fearfully
common, and when the perpetrators are
arrested they often plead guilty so as to
be sentenced TO the great Central Jail"
for there they are sure of two years of
good food aud comfortable quarters, and
skilled medical attendance if sick. To
be sure they have to work, but that they
would gladly do anywhere for their food.
There are several of these great central
jails in the Madras Presidency, where
those guilty of grave crimes and given
long sentences are sent, and they are
splendidly managed institutions. They are
capable of accommodating from 1900 to
1900 convicts each, and they are all now
overcrowded. 1t were easy to underrate
tho draaI reality IF Uarp hard to oyor-
draw the picture of the distress and dread
that is resting on the people in the famine
districts.
How does the Government meet thisl
I answer, nobly. The Government right
ly regards it better to give the people en-
ployment with good pay and import food
for them to buy, than to support them in
idleness. Works, then, of public advan-
tage, but Of not enough pressing import
ance to lie undertaken otherwise, are at
once put under way in every famine
stricken locality. Roads are surveyed and
built; new reservoirs and tanks are con-
structed; old ones are repaired and en-
larged; public wells are dug in each city
and village; new markets, jails. and
court houses are erected, new streets are
laid out and graded in cities, or old ones
widened or improved, or public parks
made; stone bridges are built to employ
stone masons; anu all these expenditures
borne from GOVERNMENT funds 10 save the
lives of the people. At the same time the
Government imports largely of rice and
every available country, and sends supply
r. a.