THE FAMINE IN CHINA.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 144, 15 June 1878, Page 4

THE FAMINE IN CHINA.

The following: horribly graphic letter tppears in the Spectator :— Tho dearth in China to which Sir Thomas Wade has lately drawn attention, and which it perhaps the widest epread and most feartul sooorge thnt has befallen humanity for the last two hundred years, began first in the autumn of 1875. Its immediate cause was the long absence of rain, but the phenomenon to which it wbb and still is primarily due is the gradual desiccation of the vast plains of Cbibli and Shantung, a process which, commencing in the tablelands of Central Asia, has now reached the densely populated northern provinces of China. For the last two years I have been in constant communication with the famine-strioken districts, and the letters I have received from day to day can only be described at sickening. Fanoy, sir, a tract of country larger than thirteen Switzerlands, a prey to want that it is well-nigh impossible to relieve. The people's faces are black with hunger j they are dying by thousaads upon thousands. Women and girli and boys are openly offered (or •ale to any chance wayfarer; when I left the country, a respectable married woman oould be easily bought for six dollars, and a girl for two. In cases, however, where it was found impossible to dispose of their children, parents have been known to kill them sooner than witness their prolonged sufferings, in many cases throwing themselves afterwards down wells, or committing suicide by arsenic. Corpses lay rotting by the highway, an;l there were none to bury them. As for food, the population subsisted a long time on roots and grass; then they found some nourishment in willow buds, and finally tie the thatches off their cottages. The bark of trees served them for several months, and last July I reoeived speeiooens of the stuff the unhappy creatures bad been by that time reduced to. The rooet harmless kind was potato stalk?, tough, stringy fibres, which only the strongest teeth eoulJ reduce to pulp, and which strongly defied all my attempts at deglutition. The other description of '• food "— I hardly espeol credence, but I have seen it myself— was red sandstone. It appears that this substance when rolled ■bout in the mouth and chewed will eventually split ioto small splinters, which oen be swallowed after practice* To puoh frightful extremities have the famine-strioken people in China been put, I might fill many of your columns with even more shocking details still, bat I think I have said enough. The chief, indeed I may say the only, sustenance which has hitherto been proffered has come from foreigners in the open ports, the missionaries, both Protestant and Catholic, acting as their almoners. Many wealthy Chinese have also given liberally, but the misery increases, and more help is urgently required. Surely the recital of eo appalling a ealamity Will be sufficient to enlist sympathy for the suffering Chinese, If not, let me urge their ciaime upon political grounds. There is do doubt that the present distress and the noble generosity of foreigners io the East have combined to produce a very warm and grateful feeling towards us on the part of the natives. The eight of so much selfaaerifioiDg labor and Cbristlike selfforgetfulness as have been displayed by the missionaries throughout these troubles h«i filled the Chinamen with astonishment. It has opened their eyes entirely. « What," they are reported to have said on one occasion, when thousands of men came flockiDg round the missionaries who had brought them inch timely succor, ••are these the foreigners we heard bo much about the malignant, untorupulons, deceitful foreif dws? Well, we will never speak ill of them again, nor believe what the Mandarins teli us of them. The Mandarins leave us to die of starvation, while the foreigners they taught us to bate are spending their lives in saving oars." This is but a faint representation, air, of the new born good will of the Chinese people to us, and it is well that their friendship and gratitvde shoo Id be cemented by further doeds of mercy.