The weekly Union times. [volume] (Union C.H., South Carolina) 1871-1894, 1879-03-07

dren were crying for food in palm thatched
huts. All the earth cried for rain, and yet
not tear of pity came front the Clouds.
The large cattle proprietors began to kill
their stock in order to get the meat and
Fhides while there was time. The peasants
gathered around these slaughter houses to
beg morsel of flesh, and, for the most part,
they found willing hearts and hands, for
the richer Cearences are not the men to re-
fuse an aims. But where there were no
cattle the poor people suffered dreadfuly.
Already they began to devour the mucu-
man seeds (like red BEAM and forest roots
-unwholesome, disease prodaeieg food
but what could starving people do? April
came with blazing sun; no hope Of rains.
The people, indeed, were in despair. They
had formed long penitcntial professions,
cutting themselves with sharp knives or
carrying heavy stones on their heads
Now they began to flee from the country
to the larger villages. Some of them came
down to the City of Fortaleza, ragged,
dirty wrctches, with famine marks on
their faces, with famine weakness in
their thin forms, and still the government
insisted that the drought wss political
scheme to bring their party into disrcpute
The people were eating cats and dogs by
this time, when they could get them
But for the most part they were begging of
richer neighbors. The strain was SO great
that private charity began to fail Cattle
stealing and petty thefts of provisions were
of every day occurrence. Letters written
at this time already contained sad pictures.
DESPERATE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.
This universal abandonment of the open
country was feature of the drought
The poor people from the first sought ref.
uge in the interior towns or at Fortalcza
Some fled to neighboring provinces, where,
however, matters were hardly better. In
Piauhy and Rio Grande the peasants were
already dying of hunger. And this, re-
member, was only in the beginning of the
evil time. Think of the suffering all
through this weary year think how people
who we're starving in April must have lived
in July, October, December, with the bra
zen sun every hour drawing away the little
moisture that was left. 1t was no longer
the question of saving herds and crops,
but Of saving human lives The cattle had
RAaslals hsfasss tais-sumnser was over
Not tenth part survived of the immense
herds ; sheep and goats had fallen prey to
starving robbcr bands. 1t was unsafe to
travel alone, even by day, so desperate
were the poor people. Tie influx Of ref
ugecs to the villages and towns was enor-
mous-hftccn or twenty thousand was no
unusual number in q place whose normal
population was no more than two or three
thousand. by the end Of the year there
were 10000 wrctchcs cncamped around
Fortaleza, lying on the sands under huts
made of boughs or palm leaves, hardly
clothed, filthy, famishcd, begging, where
they could, and finally dying in the streets,
because private charity was cxhaustcd.-
My collection of letters, written during this
time, is onl y a repetition of sad scenes
hunger, pestilencc, assassination, ruin of
the rich, dying Of the poor
DAWN OF TIE YEAR 1878.
Picture to yourself the condition of Ccara
in January, 1878. a province dried up,
blasted. Pastures without grass, forests
without leaves, rivers without water, fields
without crops. The cattle industry des-
troyea utterly; only few bccves survived
about the larger towns of the thousands
that had roamed over these plains. The
cotton and sugar industries almost annihila.
ted; no mandioca even, except in about
three or four mountain villages. People
obliged to go five or six miles from their
houses to dig for water in the bed Of some
torrent. At least two hundred thousand
refugees cncamped about the larger towns
10000 of these added to tho % OO0 of