THE CHINESE FAMINE. SALE OF CHILDREN IN THE STREETS.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 377, 15 June 1889, Page 5

THE CHINESE FAMINE. SALE OF CHILDREN IN THE STREETS.

Furtiikk details of the great famine in | North China are given in lefcteis from missionaries at Chofoo and othor places. They show thac about 80,000 people are being fed by the missionaries. The Rev. Vaul D. Bergen writes from Chefoo on February 16th: "I have just returned from atrip beyond the district city ot Chi- Yang. In the market town of Wang Chia (Jh'uan the most bitter need begins t3 be felt. Here X saw the people in the fields plucking up the frozen wheat sprouts, and here women have publicly hawked their children for sale in the streets, saying, • Who will buy this boy ? I can't feed him any longer, and I don't want to hear him crying about for want of food.' Here I was surrounded by a crowd of half -famished people (who at nrsb sight of the foreigner concluded at once that relief had come) on their knees begging for aid, and crying out : ' Don't leavs all these people to starve to death.' " My route lay along the inner embankment on the noroh side of the river, and the desolation which nißb the eye on every hand was in the last degree oppressive. Everything speaks ot poverty, bitter and unrelie\ed. Between these two banks is a great expanse of sand, dotted here and there with a few hovels of the same character as those on the embankment. I went down into one of these villages at the morning meal and examined their food. It is a combination of dry bean leaves (such as they commonly use for fuel) pulverised and millet chad", tho latter being a luxury which they can afford to use but sparingly. Thia, -with water, is their only diet, except in special cases. It is needless to say that with such nourishment as this

MANY DIE OF GRADUAL STARVATION coupled with cold and exposure. Great numbers from this region have scattered in various directions, having nob even this food, and become vagrants, not irom choice but necessity. Turning towaid the south the outlcok is, if possible, still worse, for here ab our feet rolls again that teinble Yellow River, now tilled with piled-up ice and already re-commencing its career of deshuciion, for it spreads across the entire space bet-ween the outer south embarkment and the inner north one, a di&canco of from se^ en to ten li. Here are lines of villages caught in the ice, some of them half submerged, with the ice piled in huge fragments about their walls. The water returned about the 25th of the twelfth moon and came down on these villages in the night, so that the people had barely time to escape from their beds to the housetops. Here, during most ot the night, they were exposed to the severe weather until most of them were badly frozen. One man told me that his daughter lo&t one?of her feet from that night's cold. Most of these people lost the little they had. " Proceeding along the embankment, we meet families escaping from the district, wheeling all that remains of their goods on a small barrow. I recollect seeing one old man and his wife, both over 70 years ot age, he wheeling the bariow and she with a rone over her shoulder and staff in hand, hobbling along, pulling the barrow to the best of her ability. Just as we passed they stopped for a rest, and as I heard their deep sighs of weariness, and noted Che worn expression ot their wrinkled faces, I felt that theirs indeed was a bitter lot, and could not bub desire intensoly to possess the ability and discretion to alleviate successfully their troubles." The Rev. Dr. J. L. Nevins, writing from Chefoo, says: "The amount of suifering thab cannot be relieved by our beat efforts is simply heartrending. ' * * In one village which I visited a week ago the condition of the people surpasses my powers of description. They seemed to have given up all hope. Their faces, wan and sallow by starvation, were darkened by the shadow of a hopeless despair ; a silence like death prevailed in the village. The people sab still in their houses or lay upon their kanga in mute suspense, as it seemed, awaiting their end. Alas ! help was too late for many in that village. "