Famine in India | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 2, 1878

Famine in India.

Another disastrous famine is feared in South India. The weather was unfavorable last summer, seed was scarce, and oxen could not be procured to plow; consequently, less planting was done than usual. To add to the misfortunes of the sorely stricken natives, there were swarms of locusts and grasshoppers. The Rev. J. E. Clough writes of the Telugu Christians that they are nearly all in distress:—

“The number of people sick at the present time is beyond all precedent. As people in America and England judge of the needs of the sick, ‘there are not well ones enough to take care of the sick.’ Ague and fever, dysentery, dropsy, etc., are the prevailing diseases. We disburse all the quinine, etc., we can get; but this is only like adding a drop of water to the Bay of Bengal. The distress from want of food is still almost as great as it was in August. The price of grain has fallen but little. Many, very many, are too weak or too sick to work. Credit for the poor there is none. Hence, as government relief-camps at Ongole, Aloreki, and Pardoli have been injudiciously broken up, hundreds, yes, thousands go wandering about the country from place to place, begging, stealing, taking anything they can get their hands on, until too weak to go longer or until taken sick, when they crawl into some corner or into some hedge and die, their bodies too often being left unburied, food for crows, dogs, and jackals.”—The Independent.