RAVAGES OF FAMINE

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 18, 1878

RAVAGES OF FAMINE.

The terrible ravages of the famine in China may be judged of from the following extract from a letter of a missionary:—

This day was the worst of all. I saw abundant proofs that men eat clay and stones. I bought three stone cakes. The stone is the same as our soft stone pencils. It is reduced to dust and mixed with millet husks, in different proportions, and then baked. It does not look bad, but tastes like what it is,—dust.

The dead seemed to-day to number more than on any previous day, for there were twenty-nine in eighteen miles along the road, and the circumstances were more frightful. In one valley the road branched into two, and my servant took one while I took the other,—one each side of the stream.

On this road the servant saw a woman lying in a ditch after having been robbed of all she had, and still moving though unconscious of any one passing by. Further on we saw a man's head cut clean from his body,—a cruel murderer's deed.

We saw, also, among the dead some wounded heads, but it was not done by the wolves, dogs, or birds. The dogs barked and howled at us when we drove them off from the dead.

The soft stone is sold at from two to five mills a pound, and bark from five to seven mills per pound, for food. The roots of sweet flags are dug, but they cause the face to swell. Grain is three or four times the usual price, and turnips and cabbage five or six times. Flour is seven, eight, and nine mills per ounce.

In every city through which I passed the report was twenty, thirty or forty dying daily. At Pingyang ten great pits had been filled, and two carts were daily employed in carting the dead. One innkeeper told us that one of his customers reported having counted two hundred and seventy dead on the road in three days' journey.

Whole families, old and young, die in their houses and lie unburied. In one district a third of the population is dead and the people maintain that in many towns fully one-half have perished, and they know villages where formerly dwelt three hundred, four hundred, and even five hundred people, of whom not more than a hundred now remain.—Selected.