The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-04-11
IN STARVING INDIA.
A Typical village in the Famine
Stricken District.
From the New York Tribune.

From the New York Tribune.
Here is the picture of a village in Low
er Bengal. 1t is in a 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 famne-stricken districts in the
northwest provinces, in Dude in Bombay,
in Nissa. so that one description will fit
them all.
A hot, pitiless sky, a dead level of
brown plain, fading away into the blue
mists of the horizon, in vast monotony
Where the ragged palms draw closer to-
gether, between their crooked stems a rib
bon of blue smoke rises into the sky. In
the hot. tremulous air, brown kites hover
and circle, their shrilling 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 stone, brick or wood
is used i'm the building of them. They are
all built on one plan, though the village
itself is without plan of any kind; simply
a few scores of houses, at all angles to
each other, with no regular streets or
roadways, only underlined open spaces be-
tween them. Each house is on a raised
clay platform, and the four 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, bamboo frame with mat
ted palm leaves. The inhabitants are not
greatly in evidence; at best, they fill
small place in the picture. hardly more
than the brown kites circling in the sun
light; such Is the sense of lonely immensi-
ty one gets from these limitless fields with
their unbroken horizon under the arch of
the blue. Yet In this district, and in
many others round it, the population is 500
to the square mile; in Behar II is even
more, a population of tens of millions liv-
ing with only a square mile or less for a
thousand Of them, and this without a sin
gle considerable city; only villages, viii
lagos, unnumbered, hiding under the palms
ana bamboos, where the trees gather in,
into little groups.
Nearly all these villagers live by agri-
culture; the thousands of them dividing
their square mile of land into little fields,
with ridges a few inches high between
them, partly to mark the margins of their
tenancy, party to guide the streams of
irrigating waters. Here is the most i'm
portant factor in their lives, the source of
all their meager well-being, and now, when
the rains have failed, the cause of want.
restitution, starvation. For the rains come
only at one season, while the rice, thirsti-
est Of the plants OF the field needs water
abundantly, almost up to the time of the
winter harvest. So the villagers make
huge reservoirs or tanks, raised by en-
bankments above the level of their fields.
and with wide, sloping sides, where the
torrents of the tropical monsoon collect
from June till September From the res
ervoir runs a network OF little canals.
winding their way through the fields. and
with lesser streamlets In each OF them. so
that every plant may be abundantly sup
piled; the brown-skinned cultlvators toll
ing necessarily, almost naked, but for
loln cloth, in the fierce heat of the long
Indian day. Every little channel in ia
turn has to be opened and cleared all
weeds carried away. while a barefoot d.
reefs the water to the roots OF the rice
plants and this work must be carried on
day by day until the winter harvest AT
the winter solstice.
When the tank runs low the water must.
be lifted up to the level OF the highest
canal by an old world implement. which
IS nothing but a huge ladle made from
the broad stem OF a palm tree, and turn
ing on an axle over the water OF the tank
Laborous altogether by hand labor. the
water Is lifted up, bucketfu at "A time
ana In this way all the fields or the village
must be watered day by day as the rice
grows green, taller and taller az the fan OF
the year draws IN. BY such toll "a This
IL all goes WELL each OF these eultivstoss
may hope for a few handful OF rice eacb
day for himself aud his dusky family ana
the few lean coins which the dark-slluned