A FEARFUL REPORT FROM CHINA.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VI, Issue 272, 19 July 1878, Page 5

A FEARFUL REPORT FROM CHINA.

The Rev. S. Wells Williams, in a letter dated February 10th, says :—: — This day was the worst of all. I saw abundant proof of men eating clay or stones, and bought three stone cakes. The stone is the same as our soft stone pencils. It is reduced to dust and mixed with millet husks, in different proportions, and then baked. It does not look bad, but tastes like what it is — dust. The dead seem to-day to number more than on any previous day, for there were twenty-nine in eighteen miles along the road, and the circumstances were more frightful. In one valley the road branches into two, and my servant took one while I took the other — one each side the stream. On his road, the servant saw a woman lying in a ditch after being robbed of all she had, and still moving, though unconscious of any one passing by. Further on we saw a man's head cut clean from his body — a cruel murderer's deed. We saw also among the dead some wounded heads, but not done by the wolves, dogs, or birds. The dogs barked and howled at us when we drove them off from the dead. Many of the corpses seen when we were going had disappeared, but their places were more than supplied by others.

To these details of what I sa\y I give you a briefer account of what I have heard. Some men coming from Sichum, on their way to Peking, said that along the whole way they saw dead bodies here and there. Snow had fallen in Honan province a foot deep, and about eight inches in Shansi to the west and northwest, and none further north in that province. In all that region west of this the cold had been unusual. The soft stcue is sold at from 2to 5 mills a pound, the bark from sto 7 mills per pound for food. The roots or sweet flags are dug, but they cause the face to swell. Grain is there for four times the usual price, and turnips and cabbages five or six times. Flour is 7, 8 and 9 mills per ounce. In every city I passed through the report was twenty, thirty, or forty dying daily. At Ping Yang ten great pits had been filled, and two carts were employed in carting the dead. One innkeeper told us that one of his customers reported having counted 270 dead on the road in three days' journey. Whole families, old and young, die in their houses and lie there unburied. In one district a third of the population are dead, and the people maintain that in many towns fully one-half have perished, and they know villages where formerly dwelt 300, 400, and even 500 people of whom not more than a hundred now remain.