St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1878-10-26
From the New Orleans Picavune.l
Suffering China.

! In the presence of pestiience
that scores its victims by hundreds
each day, the people of the stricken
Southland know what it IS to fear,
20 mourn and to suffer. The silent,
ruthless, inscrutable destroyer has
hung over US for hundred days,
and yet his quivers seem to be full
of. the shafts OF death, and his wea-
pons are darted with untirlng
strength. Those who fed from him
are stricken in their places of refuge.
Those who detied the champion of
destruction with courageous hearts,
strong frames and steady nerves
have fallen under his deadly aim.
Those who feared him and used all
care to make themselves proof
against his poisoned darts have been
pierced in their elosese coverts.
The sky is still filed with his flying
missiles of pain and death, and al
though the autumnal equinox is
twenty days gone, and the fierce sun
has tempered his blistering beams,
the destroyer will not cease from
scattering his poisoned javelins.
They fall in retired hamlets, in iso-
lated villages, on lone plantations,
in humble cabins, rs well as in
crowded cities and in the homes of
the rich.
Yet on the other side of the planet
among our antipodes, a deadly fam
inc has been at work for more than
twenty months, over an area larger
| than six of our rfeyer-stricken States,
whose victimes already outnumber
all who have perished by all forms
of pestilence on our continent dur
ing the past century. The dense
population of five provinces of the
| Chinese Empire, numbering many
millions of inhabitants, are changed
tby famine into an immense grave
yard. The people, having devoured
every animal and every herd, shrub
and living vegetable thing, having
filed themselves with clay mixed
with rice ehaff, have been driven to
the last resource of the starving,
and are actually killing and eating
their own children and kindred.
In Ireland, some thirty years ago,
thousands perished by famine with
in two or three hundred miles of
abundance, because the means OF
transportation We're inadequate to
bring the food to the scene OF suffer
ing. In the late terrible famine IN
India there were abundant food for
the relief of the victims if it could
only have been placed in their. hands.
So it is now with the perishing In
habitants of Shantung and neigh,
boring provinces. A whole yeal
has passed since they began to die
of starvation by thousands, yet nc
relief at all has reached many wide
regions, and only partial relief ha:
been extended to small fraction O
the desolated territory. While tht
names of millions are recorded a:
most wretched applicants for relic
there are five times as many wht
cannot be reached or heard from
Hundreds of thousands of youns
women and children have been solt
by their parents for food, which ha
long been consumed, and the par
ents themselves are dead or ready t
, die from hunger. The unburie'
E corpses fill the air with pestilen
and sickening odor, and the bone
, of whole armies of victims lie whit
a ening around deserted dwellings.
:; The pictures drawn by the mos
vivid Imagination OF tie terribl
q scenes of such famine, are tam
e and weak in comparison with th
It reality as it has been in part mad
known. In order to conceive th
magnitude of this scene of desoli
ton, suffering, death, and torment