The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1878-04-10
FAMEN T..
Some of ITS Horrible Aspects i'm China.
New York Ev ng Postl

New York Ev n ng Post.l
We may leave meteorologists to discuss the
causes of the phenomenon presented by the
syLchroDous and long continued absence of
rain in India, China, Corea and California
Any theory protesting to account for the ex-
istence of identical conditions in countries
the physical circumstances OF which are
so entirely different must be made capable
of a very wide and varied appli-
cation. Most people will be content to know
the facts connected with each calamity.
The scene of the famine is the vast delta
plain which forms one of the most notice
able features in the surface OF China, and
which includes the provinces of Chile,
Shanse, Shense, and Honan. This inn
mense plateau covers an area of 246 72l
square miles, and is inhabited by popula-
ton of upward of seventy millions. The
soil, which consists almost entirely of loess
is so highly productive 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 retain
moisture for any but short periods, while a
few days dry weather is enough to con-
vert the surface into dust. Tradition says
that IN bygone ages the mountains which
fringe the plain on all sides were thickly
wooded, and that in those halcyOn DAYS
constant and temperate showers almost
invariably insured to the farmers rich and
plenteous crops; but at the present time so
completely have these forests been DESTROYED
that from Peking to Heckow-a distance of
200 miles-scarcely tree or a shrub is TO be
seen, except in the immediate neighOorhood
of some of the villages. Without recogniZ-
ing 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 which
used to water the earth at seed time can no
longer be reconed upon.
But at the present moment it is not a
question of the failure of one years crops,
but of three, and this triple calamity is
aggravated by the fact that during several
previous seasons the yield was far below the
average. What, then, is the result? 1t is
this-that seventy millions of people are IN
the direst want of food, of whom it is reck-
oned that nine millions are actually starry
Ing 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 amaci-
ated cOrpses lying by the roadside and in
the streets OF villages OF the frantic efforts
made by some to gain nourishment from the
bark of trees, the thatch from the roofs Of
houses, and even from earth and slate stone,
give us but faint glimpse of the unuttera-
ton nea ~ twice as numerous as that of the
whole German empire.
One of the most horrible aspects of severe
and long continued want is the prominence
which the instructive law of self preservation
almost invariably attains 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 sugges ton
ready to hand, that as food for the whole
household is not to be had, it is better that
one or two of its members should be sacri-
feed for the rest There is no reason to sup
pose 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.
traveller recently returned from China
writes: when left the country respecta-
bic married woman could be easily bought
for SO and a little girl for 81. In cases, how
ever where it was found impossible to dis
pose 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
avowsd form of selishness, but one not the
less cruel, is the desertion of households by
the bread winners. Thousands of able
bodied men are daily emigrating from the
famine stricken districts to Mongolia and
elsewhere, leaving the old men, women and
children. to die of hunger or struggle through
as best they may.