Year: 1877

| Il Terrible FdDine-Tke Dead RccEOneoi
Jy Millions.


[From the London Times.l


The famine which our Shanghai cor
respondents letter describes is disaster
| of woful magnitude. It extends over a
very wide region of the empire, it is
carrying off the population daily by
thousands, and there is no near hope that
its ravages will soon be over. Through
the north and east of the country, from
the near neighborhood of the imperial
city and from the shores of the Yellow
sea, beyond the line of the great wall
which shuts off China from the western
world outside, the terrible visitation ex-
tends. The suffering, we are told, is
beyond description. In addition to the
multitudes who have already perished
under it, there is the larger number of
those who are just managing to keep
alive, and from whose exhausted ranks
fresh victims are continually added to
the dismal roll Anything that will allay
hunger is eagerly sought after, no mat
ter how uninviting or unfit to be used as
food. The rotten thatch of the houses
and dried leaves that serve generally for
fuel are not now neglected as nauseous
or unsatisfying, and lucky indeed is the
man who can get full supper even of
these The Government is making the
semblance of an effort to relieve the wide
spread misery but the means it employs
are wholly inadequate. An expression of
verbal sympathy, a grant of money which
allows about farthing day for the re-
lief of each case of distress, and some
well-meant but mistaken edicts, which
have had the effect simply of making
matters verse than before, are the meas
ure of the assistance which the Chinese
rulers can bestow.


The cause of the famine is the same as
of that from which India is now suffer
irg. The crops of last summer were, we
are told, almost entirely destroyed by
drought, and the peasantry have now come
grain and have nothing left on which they
can fall back for support. China is q
country in which at the best of times the
population presses very closely upon the
means of subsistence. There were 10
waste stores anywhere. Everything is
already turned to account, and when the
necessity conies there is little room for
any further saving or reduction. Land





most to furnish food and dwelling
space for the teeming multitudes which
cover them.


To the great Eastern hive, thickly
swarming with It's uncounted millions OF
inhabitants, the chance of famine is
never far distant, and the worst reality of
famine arrives very easily. It is present
among them now, and it is fearful to
! think of the intense and widespread mis-
cry which it will bring with it before il
has run its course. There is the hope,
our correspondent writes, of good crops
in the coming season for those who sur
vive The snow, which does much to ag-
gregate the present distress, is at least a
security against the recurrence of another
drought. But he holds out no early hope
of relief. When summer comes all will
i be we'll for those who are alive to witness
it and to enjoy the plenty which is in
prospect for them. Meanwhile, in the
dreary weeks which still remain, the suf-
fering is growing worse daily. The peo-
pie have been driven already to their last
resources, and those have proved INSULT
cient. The total loss it is not easy to
estimate. We hear of villages of SOC
families with 800 reported as dead from
starvation. This, or something like it,
appears to be the actual condition OF
some 5000 villages, and there are others
besides in which the pressure is less
extreme, but still terribly severe. The
numbers of the dead, it is clear, must be
already reckoned by millions, but We
can hazard no conjecture as to the total
which will have been reached before the
return of summer.


GEN J1CHSON hIDE HIM Ply.


The keeper of boarding house here,