A Tearful Picture of Suffering.
A CORRESPONDENT of the London Times, writing from Calcutta on July 31st, gives a fearful picture of the suffering caused by the famine in India. He says: I started from Midnapore, a civil station about seventy miles southwest of the capital, on the morning of the 26th of June, and had hardly proceeded some seven miles when commenced the painful sights which, varying only in intensity, continued until I again returned to this place. Rain had fallen heavily during the night, and the palki men were trudging slowly through the mud, when a little after daybreak, I saw two bodies under a tree. As there seemed to be a slight motion in one, I alighted, and on going up to it found, covered under an old cloth, with just a spark of life left in him, an old man slowly dying from hunger. He appeared as if he had a thin piece of transparent rubber tightly drawn over his skeleton frame, so emaciated had he become. I gave him some beer, and he slowly faltered out his tale of woe. He said that he and his companion had left their homes, after seeing their families die from the effects of cholera or famine, and had got thus far on their journey toward Midnapore, hoping to get relief there, when one, struck by damp and hunger, dies on the road under a tree, and the other wakes to find his friend a corpse, and himself exhausted and drenched by the heavy rain that had fallen during the night, unable to move. The dogs and jackals feast off the body, while this living skeleton, but a few paces off, is powerless to prevent them. He faintly begs from the passers-by, but in vain. Hunger is gnawing their vitals also. They all turn a deaf ear to his cry. The beer seemed to revive him, and I went to my palki to get some biscuits, but returned to find the poor sufferer in a state of coma, and in a few minutes he was dead. The half-picked body of his companion attested his tale. I continued my journey, passing at intervals the dead as they lay unburied, and in every stage of decomposition on the side of the road. Sometimes I would see a cluster together. In one place there were twenty-two bodies within the space of half a mile; in another six, close together, all more or less mangled and torn by the jackals, dogs and vultures. Pushing my way through the jungle and over paddy fields, often obliged to swim sundry streams swollen by the late floods, in one of which my palki was upset, I traversed one hundred and twenty miles of country, when I reached the house of a Mr. Fales, an assistant in Messrs. Watson & Co.'s indigo concern here. That gentleman informed me that a woman had died by the roadside, and that a living child was said to be at her breast. He sent out his servants, who returned saying that they had found the corpse and the child, but the mother's arm clasped the latter so tight that in bending it back, it was so stiff and cold, it broke. They say that the living and the dead had been thus linked together for two days; at any rate, the poor little infant, exhausted by exposure and want, died as it was being released. The above gentleman and myself were traveling through a dense jungle. Miles away from any human habitation, we perceived a famished native of the Sonthal tribe, lying on the ground; he had thrown himself down to meet a certain death; but a little brandy re-kindles the vital spark, and, loth to leave him to be a prey for the jackal and leopard, we have him placed on the roof of a palki. The palki bearers, however, refused to budge an inch, saying that their caste would be gone. “Suaviter in modo” is tried, but “no go;” “fortiter in re” then came into play. They murmured, looked at the palki, asked for a bottle of grog, and then trudged along with their tipsy burden. The brandy had been too strong for him. I am glad to add, that in twenty-four hours after this the burden was walking about. The misery entailed by the famine has brought out all the worst qualities of the lower classes of natives. As a rule, affectionate and fond of their homes, they have in too many instances fled, leaving their wives and families to starve; but, as an eye witness in two cases where nobler feelings held their sway, I here record them. A woman with her three young children crawls up163 to a planter's house, just as luncheon was being carried from the table; she begs for the remainder of the curry and rice, which are at once taken out to the verandah and placed before her. Without attempting to eat, she quietly seats the three children round the dish, who in a few minutes demolish its contents; and although the mother is wasted to a skeleton, yet, mumbling her thanks, she turns away, grateful that her offspring have been fed, even while she herself still hungereth. In another village we met a little girl and her mother, lying under a mango tree. Both were faint from hunger; they had been trying to keep life together by feeding on snails picked out of ponds, berries and lizards, where they could obtain them, but daily feeling weaker, they had sunk down under a tree, awaiting a lingering death. We get some boiled rice and put it before them. The younger is the stronger, the mother is too weak to raise herself. Although the child's big eyes flashed with a hungry gleam, yet her little hands, well filled, first seek the mother's mouth, and not until half the rice is thus gone, does she herself eat. It is impossible to judge of the numbers that have died from actual want, as no returns are kept; but taking the three districts of Balasore, Cuttack and Midnapore, I should say quite twelve hundred a day. In Balasore large plague pits have had to be dug near the town to receive the bodies of those found dead near their precincts, but in too many instances the bodies are left to rot on the roadside.