Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1877-10-12
The Indian Famine.

The terrible condition of affairs in the fam
ine-stricken districts of India has been de-
scribed in Geographic dispatches with de-
gree of fullness that has given vivid idea of
the horror brooding over that unfortunate
country. Yet the story has not all been told,
and probably never will be, for reasons po-
tent with Indian officials. who have the pow
err to cover up some of the facts forever. The
following extract from letter written by n
gentleman in India to a relative in England
adds many interesting facts to what have al
ready been sent to this country by telegraph.
Things here are far worse than people i'll
England have any idea-far worse even than
l had thought, and l knew something of what
was going on before | came out. Many vii
lagos in Bellary have been entirely depopu-
lated. The famine began with the utter fail
ure of forage The people pulled the thaeh
off their houses to feed their cattle. That
was soon gone Then the cattle died. The
sticks of the roofs were soon sold. and for n
mere song and the proceeds eaten in day
or two. BY this time, long after it ought to
have been done, works had been set on foot,
and the able bodied went off to them en- mdSse,
II regular case of SdUre qW pcut, leaving be-
hind them the old and the feeble, and the
children. who have all died so that in many
of the smaller once fourishing villages i'll
Kurnool and Bellary there is now left alive
neither man, woman, child. nor bcast-noth-
ing but roohess houses and the skeletons along
the road sides, which the jackals and vultures
have picked clean. A more fearful calamity
has never descended on any people probably,
for the last century. The deaths are known
to amount already to more than half million,
and the rains of June and July have been so
scanty that it must be at least six months be-
fore the crops they are now sowing can come
to maturity, and help to mitigate the suffer
ing which prevails. But the statement that
more than half million of deaths have al
ready occurred by no means conveys the full
extent of the calamity that has befallen the
country. For, in the first place, the returns
are known to be most imperfect.
Thousands of deaths must have occurred in
the villages which the village officers have
not reported. 1t is always so, through lazi-
ness and negligence and now, of course, that
they have had orders that no one is to be al
lowed to die of starvation, it is more so than
usual for no native village officer is likely to
report that he has so failed in his duty as to
let people die, and so he simply suppresses
the fact of their death, and no one is ever
likely to find it out. Then there are thous-
ands who have died by the wayside and in the
jungles, where they had gone to pick up ber-
ries and dig up roots to stay the cravings of
hunger, whose fate no man knows, and of
whom the jackals and vultures have left moth
ing but the bones and there are thousands
more who now crowd the relief camps-I
might almost say hundreds of thousands
whose constitutions are so broken by continued
privation that no nursing or medical skill can
save them.
l have heard of one camp where the NOR
tally has been at the rate of 700 per 1000 per
annum. This may have been an exceptional
case, but the official report for the week end
ed July u gives an average rate of j9s deaths
per 1000 per annum. In other words the peo-
pie i'll the relief camps are dying at the rate
of out of every 10 in the year, the ordinary
rate of mortality being about % per 10 per
annum. The deaths are therefore, 30 times
what they should be, or thereabouts. The
population of the relief camps, which is ex-
posed to this rate of mortality was on the 2lst
of July pa, 900. Besides these (of course the
worst cases. there are 26O, 900 people, many
of the better classes or those who are not en-
tirey without resources of their own, who are
relieved in their own villages by a small money
dole. They are dying ut the rate of 30 per
1000 per annum say 49, times quicker than in
ordinary times. These figures are for Madras.
In Mysore things are, if possible, worse.
heard to-day of II relief camp at Alysore to
which the Chief Commissioner took the Chief
Engineer, who just returned from leave to
England They inspected some 1000 poor
creatures, and after the inspection was over,
the Chief Engineer said "Well, the truest
mercy would be to send for some troops, and
shoot every man, woman and child of those
1000, for there is not one of them but must
die a lingering and painful death" And the
doctors who were there confirmed him in
what he said