p. 32 | The Syrian Famine

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 7, 1874

The Syrian Famine.

The following statement in a letter recently received by the New York Evangelist, from the Rev. Dr. Jessup, shows the suffering inflicted by the famine in Syria:—

Our Protestant communities in Syria, in common with the rest of the people, are in a state of great suffering. Many families have not tasted bread for days. The price of flour is three times what it was last fall. The last year's crops failed. There is little work to be had. Our congregations have taken up collections for the poor, until the relief is well-nigh exhausted, and the distress is increasing. I know whole families who have nothing in store to eat, and know not where to get their next meal. My brother has just been on a tour, and found the people living on roots, and grass, and oak leaves; and in order to feel a sense of fullness, they drink salt water to make them thirsty, and then drink immoderately of water to distend their stomachs. I have just heard of two men who attempted suicide because their children were starving. Jehoe, our faithful native preacher, who lives here, and preaches in the adjacent villages, is in real distress. Both his wife and her sister have become stone blind, and he has to hire a servant to care for them; and, owing to flour being eighteen dollars a barrel, and everything else in proportion, he has involved himself in debt nearly two hundred dollars in the past six months, and cannot get trusted for an ounce of flour. We have attempted to aid him a little, but the number of applicants is so great that we can do almost nothing.

“A Protestant from Lebanon, with a family of ten, came to me a day or two since, and said they had no bread, and flour was selling in the village by the ounce, and he had come down to beg for money to buy ten pounds of flour to give them one meal of bread. I see no prospect of any relief for three months, and probably none before August, when the new wheat crop comes in. The Lebanon Government is doing something for the poor, but where everything is in the hands of the Maronites and Druses, the poor Protestants will stand little chance of relief. The past season has been the severest ever known in Syria, as far as I can ascertain. The greater part of the sheep, and cattle, and goats, have perished from starvation and cold.”