STARVATION IN BULGARIA.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 178, 15 November 1876, Page 2

STARVATION IN BULGARIA.

ANOTHER STARTLING PICTURE OF THE HORRORS OF THE "WAR. [From the London Daily Hews.) But the dead are less to be pitied than the living. They have been reduced from ease and comfort to the condition of wild animals—without home, without shelter, and living on what food they can pick up from day to day. There are women hera who have known comfort, who are weak and ill, and who have three or four little mouths to feed. They go out in the fields, reap enough wheat for the dsfi food, painfully thresh it out with their hands, pound it into flour between two stones, and bake into bread for their little ones day by day ; and sleep, like foxes, in the corner of a ruined wall on a little straw at night. There are little children here haggard, and thin, and sickly, sleeping almost on the bare ground, and, when' it rains, on the wet ground. Nobody who has not seen it can imagine the misery caused by the burning of a village. The authorities had sent some tents here for the people, which were old and ragged, capable of sheltering them from the sun, but not from the rain. But there were not enough for all. The Mudir likewise received a little food now and then, which he distributed, which barely kept those who had no harvests or other means of existence from starving. But there wai not enough, and the supply was uncertain and might cease at any moment. When j we were starting, tHe women and children | gathered around us by the hundred, and blockaded up the way. They showed u« thin, ragged clothing, and said : " See, we were rich ; we had a house and furniture, and cattle and sheep, and these rags are all we have left." They bared their lean, skinny arms, to show us their fearful emaciation ; they bared their shrunken, shrivelled breasts, at which lean, haggard, wretched babes were tugging, to show jug they had no milk. God knows, their low cheeks, and sunken eyes, and despairing faces were proof enough. They said: " We are starving ; our babes are starving —starving to death. Can you do nothing for us V And we could do nothing—nothing but shed useless tears. And the Turks of the neighboring villages, who have taken the horses arid sheep and cattle of these starving women and children, their clothing and bedding, and the tiles from their roofs, come to the village sometimes, and ride through on. the horses they have stolen, looking upon j the misery with indifferent eyes. We saw j several here who had come out of m curiosity, well fed, fat, insolent, smilingj their contempt for the starving beingjr, around them. The Turk is not only witw out pity, he is without patriotism. He does not look upon these people as hi*

nsighbors—his cotrofaryxneß. He is too ignorant and stupid to know that in injuring thexa he i» iajwing himself—that ha is attacking his own country. He knows no such thing as country. He knows only lst!n.m. The people of India---tha nomadic tribes of Central Asia—whom he has never sewn, of whom he Ivwi twarrl once or twica perhaps in his 1 i '-j - acir naarer to him than the next-door neighbors. The word* couatryf patriotism, do not exist in his language. That these Christians, hia near neighbors,, are his countrymen—that on them, as much as on himself, depend the greatness and prosperity of the country,, is a fact which has no place in his mind, which has n»> influence on his acts. He knows only that they form no part of the religion of itahooaet,. and he looks no further. When we left the tillage, a hundred of those women ran alter as for a mile with their cries and lamentations. It seems fchay thought at first we had come to bring them food or succour of some kind, and when they teamed we had only come to make an inquiry, their disappointment wis bitter and overpowering, and they sat down by the wayside, with their little ones about them, crying and wringing their hands, rocking themselves to and fro, and moaning, rather to themselves than for «3, " What shall we do I What shall we do* W« are starving !' We are starving I We lire starving to death !'"