The Hickman courier. [volume] (Hickman, Ky.) 1859-current, 1878-05-03
VOL. XIV. NO. l2.
The Fanine..in China.

No may leave mettOrOtOgiSts 10 tlsCuss
the causes of the phenomenon presented
I;by the synchronous and long-continued
absence of rain in india, China, Corea
and California. Any theory protesting
70 atcount for the existence of identical
conditions in countries the physical con-
ditions of which are so entirely different
must be made capable of a wide and
varied application. Most people viii be
content to know the facts connected with
zach calamity.
III The scene of the famine. is the great
zelta plain which forms one of the most
Noticeable features iu the surface OF
nina, and which includes the provinces
I-of Chihle, Shanse, Shense and Honan
This immense plateau covers an area OF
246, ,721 square miles, and is inhabited
by a population of upward of 10000
600. The s2il, which consists almost
entirely of loess is so highly product
i've when watered by seasonable
rains that the district covered by it used
to be regarded as the Eden of China. But
on the other hand, it is easily percOlated
BY water, and consequently fails to re
tain moisture for any but short periods,
while few days dry weather is enough
to convert the surface into dust. Tradi-
ton says that in bygone ages the noun
tsins which fringe the plain on all sides
were thickly wooded, and that in those
halcyon days constant and temperate
showers almost invariably ensued to the
farmers rich and plenteous crops but at
the present time 50 completely have these
forests been destroyed that from Peking
TO Hankow, a distance of 700 miles,
scarcely a tree or a shrub is to be seen,
except in the immediate neighborhood
of some of the villages Without recog-
nizing this wholesale clearing Of timber
as the cause, old men say that now rain
falls less frequently and with greater
vehemence than formerly, and that the
showers WEIGH used to water the earth
at seed.time can no longer be reckoned
upon.
But at the present moment it is not a
question of the failure of one years
crops, but of three, and this triple ca
lamity is aggravated by the fact that
during several previous seasonsdhe yield
was far below the average. What, then,
is the remlt? 1t is this-that 10000, 600
of people are in the direct want OF food,
of whom tits reckoned that 9,000,0 600 are
actually starving. The Imagination fails
to picture the amount of misery and
distress represented by these figures, and
the accounts which reach this country
from missionaries and others on the spot,
Of houses tenanted only by the starved
dead, of thousands of emaciated corpses
lying by the roadside and in the streets
of villages, of the frantic efforts nnade
nv some to qai4, ,ssS,s.ssAsS,-ept t71fa,.,,tt
- siIp tf1tcn from tne f0os
of houses, AID even from earth and slate
stone, give usbut faint glimpse of the
unutlerable Voc which has exs,,,, -, ,r,,,s
= ,,opulation Eearly sS~ice as
as that of tue whole German empire.
One of the most horrible aspects of
severe and loug-continued want is the
prominence which the instructive law of
self-preservation almost invariably at
tains at the expense OF every human tie
and of every virtue. The cravings of
hunger gradually blunt and destroy
every feeling which is not centered in
self, and there is always the suggestion
ready TO hand, that, as food for the
whole household IS not 20 be had, it is
better that one or two of its members
should be sacrificed for the rest. There
is no reason to suppose that the sufferers
in China yielded more readily TO the
temptation than others have done under
similar circumstances, but now at least
the traffic in human beings is openly
carried on. Husbands sell their wives,
and parents their children, in open
market.
A traveller recently returned from
China writes: When / left the coun-
try respectable married woman could
be easily bought for six dollars and a
little girl for two. In cases, however,
where it was found impossible to dispose
of their children, parents have been
known to kill them sooner than witness
their prolonged sufferings, in many
instances throwing themselves afterward
down wells, or committing suicide by
arsenic " A less avewed form of selfish
ness, but one not the less cruel, Is the
desertion of households by the bread
Thousands of able bodied men
are daily emigratiug from the famine-
districts to Mongolia and else
where, leaving the old men, women and
children to die of hunger or to struggle
through as best they may London
Review.