FAMINE IN POLYNESIA.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5379, 24 June 1878, Page 2

FAMINE IN POLYNESIA.

(From the Fiji Times, May 15.) Our readers will doubtless have felt shocked at the accounts which have reached them of the dreadful straits to which famine has reduced the inhabitants of Western Polynesia. Living on islands the fruitfulness of which is proverbial, they have been reduced to straits for food sufficient to sustain life, and must have undergone suffering the mere recital of which would cause humanity to shudder. All former experience has served to show that the prolific character of those islands is almost fabulous. In addition to the vegetable productions indigenous to the soil, it favors with luxuriant aptitude the growth of European fruits and vegetables, and as a rule these are produced in no small quantities. But a plague seems to have stricken the land. Nature has withheld her hitherto bounteous hand, and gaunt famine, stark and horrible, has stalked through the length and breadth of a desolate country, and disease and death have followed in its train. It is extremely difficult to trace the source whence this most pitiable state of matters takes its rise. We have heard of no hurricane or excessive rains by which the catastrophe deplored could have been brought about, or even

assisted. No (xcess of population or aeries of gluttonous feasts to which semi-savage people are prone are known to have taken place. The very extent of the infliction forbids the idea that any merely casual event can have contributed serioualy to the infliction. But it has occurred; and reduced by the gnawings of famine to endeavor to Sad sustenance in the grudging and scanty crop of natural herbage intended but for the beasts, men have fallen like autumn leaves, and, like hose, have almost been allowed to straw the ground from want of strength in the survivors to bury them.