"FAMINE BREAD" IN SWEDEN.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLVI, Issue 76411, 12 January 1903, Page 2

"FAMINE BREAD" IN SWEDEN.

GREAT DISTRESS AMONG THE NORTHERN PEASANTRY. .*

I have just returned from the famine* stricken districts of Northern* Sweden, a land mostly of snow- covered mountains, bogs, and trout streams,, wrote the Daily Mail's Stockholm correspondent reoent'y. The harvest has been destroy td by tbe heavy rains, the fields are completely under water, and hay, corn, and potatoes are all spoiled.

Tbe poor peasants can find no food for their animals, and the cows, their last resource, ar,e lo.ng killed for food, Tbey have had to make th. coarse cakes known as " famine bread," and in a small village which I visited, tbey had for five weeks eaten no other bread, but ibis. Although used to privations, they, could hardly sta.nd this poor, gritty food, and there war great fear of an outbreak cf typhoid. Many peasants living in villages have found themselves forotd to leave their homes and beg food from the more well-to-do farmers. Thcss, however, could give tbem but liulo, owing to tbe great scarcity of corn. But the cry of distress from the nor h has been heard, and the more prosperous farmers iofSoutberc Sweden have given a portion of their rich harvest to their suffering brethren. Many regiments, officers and men alike, have given up a day's pay to the famine sufferers, and collections in churches aud theatrical performances have swelled the relief funds. There are now 1000 waggon loads vt provisions going north, and extra relief trains are runuiog daily.

The correspondent sent several samples of the "famine bread" eaten in the strioken villages. One piece resembled a mixture of chaff and road-sorapiogs, and the other was suggestive equally of con* oiete and very coarse oatcake mixed with, chaff. Both specimens were hard, dark, and brittle.