The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1897-04-21
IN STARVING INDIA.
A TYPICAL VILLAGE IN THE FAM.
INE-STRICKEN DISTRICT.
A Pen Picture of the People Who Are
Punched With Want and Hum
ger. Vultures Feed on
the Dead,
the Dead,
From the New York Tribune.

|
Here is the picture of a village inflow
er Bengal. 1t is in part of the province
which has been suffering the horrors of
famine for months. There are hundreds
of thousands of villages exactly like it in
other famine-stricken districts in the
northwest provinces, in Dude, in Bonn
bay, in Nissa, SO that. one description
will fill them all.
A hot, pitiless sky, dead level of
brown plain, fading away into the blue
mists of the horizon, ia vast monotonv
Where the ragged palms draw closer
together between their crooked stems a
ribbon of blue smoke rises into the sky.
In the hot, tremulous air brown kites
hover and circle, their shrillng cries
echoing forth over the lonely fields.
| Higher up the vultures are mere black
! specks against the sunlight
Where the trees thicken there is a viii
lage; some hundred houses. if houses
they can be called when no brick, stone
or wood is used in building them. They
are all built on one plan, though the viii
lage Itself is without plan OF any kind;
simply few scores of houses, at all an
| giles to each other, with no regular
streets or rOadways, only underlined
open spaces between them. Each house
is on a raised clay platform, and the
tour walls are built of clay, LAID layer on
layer while it is still wet, and the whole
rooted with reeds and palm leaves, with
rafters OF bamboo. The window frames
are mere holes; the door, a loose screen.
a bamboo frame with matted palm
leaves. The inhabitants are not greatly
IN evidence; at best they fila small place
in The picture. Hardly more than the
brown kites circling in the sunlight:
such is the sense of lonely immensely one
gets from those lImitless fields, with
| their unbroken horizon under the arch
OF the blue. Yet, in this district, and
-nany others round it. the population is
SUI to the square mile; in Behar it is
even more, a population of tens of mil
lions living with only square mile or
less for thousand of them, and this
without single considerable city: oplv
villages, unuumbered, hiding under the
palms and bamboos, Were the trees
gather into little groups.
Nearly all these villagers live Ov agri-
culture; tie thousands of them dividing
their square mile of land into little fields,
with ridges few inches high between
them, partly to mark the margins of
their tenancy, partly to guide the streams
OF Irrlgating waters. Here is the most
important factor in their lives, the
source of all their meager well-being,
now, when the rains have failed, the
cause of want, restitution, starvation.
For the rains come only at one season.
while the rice, thirstiest Of all the
| plants of the field, needs water abund-
antly, almost up to the time of the win.
ter harvest. SO the villagers make huge
reservoirs or tanks, raised by embark
ments above the level of their fields. and
with wide, slOping sides, where the tor
rents of the tropical monsoon collect
from June until September. From the
! reservoir runs network of little canals.
winding their way through the fields,
and with lesser Streamlets in each of
them, so that every plant may be abund-
antly supplied; the brown-skinned Guilt
vatOIs tOiiing necessarily, almost naked
but for l0in cloth, in the fierce heat of
the long Indian day. Every little chan
mel in its turn has to be opened and
cleared, all weeds carried awav.
while bare foot directs the water to
the roots of the rice plants, and this
work must be carried on day by day un-
til the winter harvest at the winter SOL
stice.
| When the tank runs low the water
must be lifted up to the level of the
highest canal by an old world nipple
ment, which is nothing but a huge ladle,
made from broad stem of palm tree
and turning on axle over the water of
the tank. Laborious, altogether by hand
labor, the water is lifted up, a bucket
full at time, and in this way all the
heIdS OF the village must be Hatered day
by day as the rice grows greener, taller
and taller as the fall of the year draws
in BY such toll as his if all goes well,
each Of these cultivators NAV hope for a
few handsful of rice each day for himself
and dusky family and the few lean coins
winch the dark-skinued millions pay to
me great taXmaster Of all, the British
Indian government, for the privilege of a
haIi-Staryed life, and the protection of
Their mud huts and rice fields.
Ii these villagers ever heard or thought
OF the imperial power, the decorated hi
erarchy of officials, the red army of occu-
patton, and other matters that fiji the
Indian histories, it wOuld all seem to
them queer satire on their pinched