THE FAMINE IN BRAZIL.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2241, 24 May 1880, Page 2

THE FAMINE IN BRAZIL.

Secretary Evans has received a letter from the United States Consul at Penambuco describing the famine in his Consulate, in which the latter says Two years and a half ago, when the secca commenced, the province of Ceara numbered 900,000 inhabitants, and out of these 500,000 have died of disease and starvation. The secca began in the summer of 1876, arid has continued to the close of the year 1878, lasting for thirty months; no rain having fallen during the whole two years and a half, and the once fertile and luxuriant Serato, where the farms and villages prospered in peace and plenty, now presents the appearance of a vast and blackened desert, burnt over by fire. Later on, as the burning simmer slowly passed, bringing no®Novembcr showers, and anofche January we by without rain, there came appall ng news of fa ml te, disease, dead cattJc, and of dying and despairing people. Long pe ihential d ocessio.is were xormed, and t »e miserable Seivancjos boar, cut, and othe.wi'je punished themselves to appease an ohended. dei-v. But the pitiless secca s’’ cont’iued, threatening everything a id eve ybody with inevitable deslrnc. 'on. Tlie wretched people were now reduced eo the necessity of eating rootcotton-pods, the Mucmna bean, which produces dropsy, lizards, dogs, cals, rats, roac ics, any living or dead thing capable of affording sustenance, and in some ins a ices they were even goaded to cannibahsm by the pangs of hunger. To increase the unimaginable horrors of the situation, the small-pox broke out among the Sertanejos and became epidemic, typhus and odier fevers were raging, and in February and March of 1878 the mortality become frightful. Thehrattle were

n&Wall iTea'd" the riven' dried lift and there being no railroads or other coni' munication by which provision could reach the Serato, the inhabitants, dread-* ing starvation, abandoned it altogether, and the whole torrent of life swept seaward. Ceara, Parahyba, Aracaty, Baturito • * 7-H.ll the towns along the coast, were now alive with suffering humanity, age,youth, i jnen, .women, and children, all farnine- • stricken, coming in from the country by thousands upon thousands. The city of Ceara, with ■ 25,000 inbabitattl s of its own, received over 90,000 Sertanejos. Impossible to provide for such a boast; tho Carencss did their best but it was a sorrowful spectacle to see thousands of emaciated creatures sitting or lying in i the open largos' (squares) smitten with small-pox and other loathsome diseases! .some lamenting their , own fate or the ‘ loss of friends, others too weak or ill to >l complain; some wishing to die from despair, and others insane from suffer- , ing; a dangerous and most harrowing J ’scene; one with few parallels in history. 1 In Ceara, or Fortaleza, as it is indiscriminately called, the highest mortality ' ;;in normal times was 900 per year. Now about half the population (25,000) is dead. In the beginning of last November the population including, the influx numbered 90,000: -The greatest mortality prevailed in the iponths of November and December of * From Nov. 1 to Dec. 27 there diccl of small pox alone, and .were buried in.the Logoa Funda (deep lakes) ceme-; tery for the poor only, 23,470 ; estimated from Dec. 27 to 81, 1000 ; in the St. Joao 'Baptist cemeter}', 1,232 ; in the City cemetery, 1000; estimate buried outside in fields, etc., 2000.; add to this the .. mortality from other diseases 10 per * cent., '2970 ; total interments for two months, 31,671. The soil is sandy, in which trenches were dug six. feet deep and ' long enough to contain twelvb uncoflincd corpses. Three or four more are sometimes put in, when the . bodies come too fast for the corps of grave-diggers, numbering twentyfive. These grave diggers sometimes ’’drop dead in the-trenches, from the effluvia emanating from the bodies, which pe uneates the whole soil of the cemetery, and impregnates the surrounding atmosphere for nearly a mile. ■ At Parahyba, out of 15,000 Sertanjos who came to that port, 12,000 died; others wandered off, and tho place is nearly depopulated. Of Sobrnl, Pacetuba, and other places distressing ac- ■ counts that augmented the sum of human suffering could be given. But enough has .been narrated to convey .some idea of the "magnitude of the terrible scenes of Ceara. It is. estimated 150,000 died from hunger alone, and as,many more from its effects, and the remaining 200,000 from disease.