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 n tear Of pity came frou, the clouds
The large cattle proprietors began to kill
their stock in order to get the meat and
hides while there was time. Tho 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 Cearenees are not the men to re-
fuse an aims. But where there werc no
cattle the poor people suffered dreadfully
Already they began to devour the mucu-
man seeds 0ike red BEAM and forest roots
-unwholesome, disease. producing 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 wrotches, with famine marks on
their faces, with famine weakness in
their thin forms, and still the government
insisted that the drought YVES political
scheme to bring their party into disrepute
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 neigdbors. 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 ncighborng 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.o 1t was no longer
the question of saving herds and crops.
but Of saSjne human liyes.es The oattle hads
= Uvcf.-'717s
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
ugees to the villages and towns was enor-
mous-6fteen or twenty thousand was no
unusual number in place whose normal
population was no more than two or three
thousand. BY the end of the year there
were 10000 wrctches cncamped around
Fortaleza, lying on the sands under huts
made of boushs or palm leaves, hardly
clothed, filthy, famished, begging, where
they could, and finally dying in the streets,
because private charity was exhausted
My collection of letters, written during this
time, is ouly a repetition of sad scenes
hunger, pestilence, assassination, ruin Of
the rich, dying of the poor.
DAWN OF THE YEAR 1873.
Picture to yourself the condition Of Ceara
in January, 1878 a province dried up,
blasted. Pastures without grass, forests
without leaves, rivers without water, fields
without crops. The cattle industry des.
troyed utterly; only few beeves survived
auouc Viz iaiSoE tO~uS vi Tue tuOuSanuS
that had roamed over these plains The
cotton and sugar industries almost annihila.
ted no mandioca even, except 10 about
three or four mountain villages. People
obliged to 60 five or six miles from their
houses to dig for water in the bed of some
torrent. At least two hundred thousand
refugees encamped about the larger towns
10, 600 OF these added to the $4,000 of
Fortaleza. A famine mortality which in
many places has reached twenty per day
A mortality from disease very much great
er. No money in the provincial treasury
no hope of outside aid, except the drop of
private charity, and all men looked for
rain. .
So I might 60 on endlessly. Alas I
know how real it was. The tears come to
my eyes even now when read these pte-
GUS cries for help. Hunger, pestilencc,
want-thcse were what Ceara had to fight
when the second great famine year broke
upon her. Iu January there was fear, in
February terror, in March despair no
rains at all in some places, little, useless
showers at best. And now comes the most
terrible scene of all. There was no more
hope in the Sertao. No food and no pos
sibility of obtaining it, except along the
seashore. Then the whole bewildered,
famine.stricken, panic-wild crowd came