THE CHINESE FAMINE.

Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3402, 17 November 1879, Page 3

THE CHINESE FAMINE.

Mr Forrest, the English Consul at Tientsin, reports his belief that during the late famine in China, the deaths from starvation and want reached the enormous total of about "nine millions and a half— that is to say that a population more than twice that of Portugal was swept away within a few months. This estimate would appear scarcely credible were it not supported by th» report of Mr Hillier, of the Consular Service, who has lately visited the desolated provinces. His account of the condition of things is deplorable in the extreme. Towns which a * few years ago were busy centres of trade, and villages which were populous and well to do, are now silent and deserted; while houses which used to teem with life are now tenanted by the dead and the few survivors who are left to tell the miseries they have undergone. Shocking as the sight must be of this mingling of the deadwith the living, the explanation is even more ghastly. When the famine was at its height the starving people goaded by the pangs of hunger, and unable to obtain food, dug up the bodies of the buried dead. Survivors preferred, therefore, to share their homes with the coffins of their deceased friends rather than run the risk of committing them to tho uncertain ground. At intervals the sides of the road are strewn with the whitened bones of wanderers who had lain down to die where their strength failed them ; and the horror of the scene is aggravated by the presence of troops of wolves. Soon after the outbreak of the famine large quantities of stores were collected by the Chineso Government at Tientsin" and' elsewhere for transmission to the famine stricken districts, but owing to bad roads and inefficient means of transport, they arrived on the spot in such small quantities and at such uncertain intervals that thejr failed to do more than relieve the suffering of afew. "Camels, osen, mules,and donkeys," Mr Forrest says, " were hurried along in the wildest confusion, and so many were killed by the desperate people in the hills for the sake of their flesh that the transit could only be carried on by the banded vigilance of the interested growers' of grain, assisted by the traiu-bands or militia. The way was marked by the carcases or skeltons of men and beasts; and the wolves, dogs, and foxes soon put an end to the sufferings of any poor wretch who lay down to recover from or die of his sickness in those terrible defiles."