THE HORRORS OF FAMINE IN RUSSIA.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1868, 3 February 1892, Page 5

THE HORRORS OF FAMINE IN RUSSIA.

The latest despatches from the interior are more alarmiDg (telegraphs a St. Petersburg correspondent of the 'Telegraph'). The August frosts have completely destroyed the barley crops, which constitute the staple food in Archangel, and in the extreme North the rains have annihilated crops. In Novgorod even potatoes are dearer than apples, and no fodder can be obtained for cattle. Horses are offered for sale for 2a or 3s, and colts for 3d per head. The straw in the thatched roofs of the houses is being utilised for fodder. Cattle are dying in numbers on the roadsides. The Government regulations, made with a view to assisting peasants, are producing more harm than good. Complete confusion prevails in consequence of the various Ministers contradicting ovdera issued. The authorities are beginning to refuse material aid to peasants, and even to supply them with seed corn ; hence immense tracts of land are laying in a state of waste, and fears are entertained that a scarcity of corn will be felt next year. Again, the cattle plague has broken out in several places. The clergy are suffering terrible hardships, and in some part 3 they are joining the army of beggars. Women are selling themselves to support their children. No work is to be had even on the Volga. Everything is in a state of stagnation. The Bhares of the Steam Navigation Company have greatly fallen. The new loan of 125,000,000 will be only a drop in the ocean. A large deficit is expected in the Budget, and, to make matters worse, the million loads of rye promised by the Governor of a neighboring province by way of loan to the suffering Russian district, and on which the Ministry relied, are not forthcoming. They do not exist. This discovery is causing great consternation, The famine is expected to reach its acme in November. Even now the peasants are indignant at the attitude taken up by the Government and the apparent indifference of the Czar, who has not yet contributed to relieve their wants. From the several districts of Saratoff, Samara, and Vyatka resolutions of the peasants have been received by the Ministry, in which the peasants declare that if the Czar will not support them now in their need they must take the law into their own hands. They add that they have supported the Czar and his " tshinovks" in luxury long enough. The Minister hesitates to make representations to the Czar or advise him to relieve the wants of the people out of his private purse. Telegrams just received announce that partial risings are taking place. In the course of a post letter from St. Petersburg, the correspondent of the • Telegraph ' reiterates his statement that the Government were well aware, as early as last spring, that the country was on the eve of a famine. Some corn grew, but the greedy corn merchants made haste to export it, and when, the people interfered the Government tardily forbade the exportation of rye — the staple food of the corn-eating classes — but, like the proverbial cow that first yielded the milk and then put her foot in it, the measure was frustrated by the few weeks of grace accorded to the merchants, who shipped more corn out of the country in two days than they had ever done before in one week ; and, what is sadder still, the enormous quantity of rye which arrived at the ports a day or two or three days late, and which the authorities ordered to be sent back, was left lyiDg and rotting till it had to be destroyed as useless for man or beast. For the corn spirited away by ghoulish speculators — mainly Orthodox Christians, not Jews — are substituted articles of diet the consumption of which seems explicable only ou the hypothesis that man's digestive powers are as ample as those of the ostrich. During the past two months the flour-mills of Saratoff have been selling thousands of sacks of "sweepings" and refuse to traders in the villages and towns on the Volga, who in turn sell them to such of the peasants as are fortunate enough still to possess something to barter for them, The landowners refuse to give this " hungerfood" to their cattle, because, without satisfying the craving for food, it invariably produces spasms and swellings, which are frequently the symptoms of a fatal disease. The latest telegrams from Zazin state that the most loathsome and deleterious ingredients are being put in the bread baked for the people in that city and government. Despatches from the interior, dated September 21, are of a uniformly depressing character. The exorbitant prices fetched by rye are still increasing, and threaten to become prohibitive even for corporate bodies such as the Zemstvos. Sunflower seeds are being sold in waggon loads ('Novoe Vremya,' No. 5,577). Bread made of straw chopped fine, bran, and an admixture of rye is a godsend, to obtain which thousands of human beings wo aid sell their very souls. Powdered tree bark, flavored with ground peas, is esteemed an excellent food by men who work as if their bodies were made of some incorruptible metal. " Hunger - bread," made of dried dung, tree bark, powdered peas, and goosefoot, is not only not spurned, but greedily grabbed up. In one district alone of the government of Simbirsk, 37,850 starved human beings rose up en masse to leave their huts and go out into the wide world in the hopes of finding what was denied them at home. In another district of the same government (Karsoons) 50,000 peasants petitioned the authorities to let them migrate or emigrate. Thousands are applying for permits to emigrate to China, concerning which country the most fantastic conceptions prevail — ideaa as childish as those which drew Dick Whittington to London. The sight of these armies of beggars straggling through the I country is, Bays the "' Novoe Vremya,' harrowing to a degree. They drift into towns already overstocked with workmen and would-be workmen — as into Kertch, for instance, whither they came crowding like locusts ; but, finding neither work nor food, some of them encamped in the Mithridates Hills, and others took refuge in the subterranean caves (the ' Week.') In NijniNovgorod the quays and landing-places are literally black with them. Pity for those dear to them occasionally induces a husband to murder his wife, or a mother to put her children out of pain. Suicide haß become so rife since the famine began that the journals have drawn attention to it.

An unusual number of the regulars engaged in the autumn manoeuvres in England fell out during the marches, though not laden with marching kit. 111-fitting boots and the poor physique of the young recruits are credited with this state of things,