THE CHINESE FAMINE.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 901, 23 September 1879, Page 2

THE CHINESE FAMINE.

Mr. Forrest, the English Consul at Tientsin, reports his belief that during the late famine m China the deaths from starvation and want reached the enormous total of 9,500,000 — that is to say, that a population more than twice that of Portugal was swept away within a few months. This estimate would appear scarcely credible were it not supported by the report of Mr Hillier, of the Consular Service who has lately visited the desolated provinces. His account of the condition of things is deplorable m the extreme. Towns which a few years ago were busy centres of 'trade, and villages which were populous and well-to-do, are now silent and deserted ; while houses which used to teem with life are now only tenanted by the dead and the few survivors who are left to tell the miseries they have undergone. Shocking as this sight must be of this mingling of the dead with the living, the explanation is even 1 more ghastly. When the famine was at

its height the starving people, goaded ]jy the pangs of hunger and unable to obtain food, dug up the bodies of the buried dead. Survivors preferred tlie:i B fore to share their homes with the coffins of their deceased friends rather than rim the risk of committing them to the uncertain keeping of the ground. At intervals the sides of the road are strewn with the whitened bones of the wanderers who had lain down to die where their strength failed them ; and the horror of the scene is aggravated by the presence of troops of wolves. Soon after the outbreak of the famine large quantities of stores were collected by the Chinese Government at Tientsin and elsewhere 'for transmission to the famine-striken districts, but owing to bad roads and inefficient means of transport, they arrived on the spot m such small quantities and at such uncertain intervals that they failed to do more than relieve the sufferings of a few. "Camels, oxen, mules, and donkeys," Mr. Forest says were hurried along m the wildest confusion, and so many were killed by the desperate people m the hills for the sake of their flesh, that the transit could only be carried on by the banded vigilance of the interested growers of grain, assisted by the trainbands or militia. The way was marked by the carcasses or skeletons of men and beasts ; and the wolves, dogs, and foxes noon put an end to the sufferings of any wretch who lay down to recover from or die of his sickness m those terrible de6les. "