FAMINES

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 29, 1878

The suffering in India caused by the drought is, it appears, not all that that unhappy country has to suffer. A Calcutta dispatch says that the government of Madras has telegraphed for extra famine officers immediately, because of the ravages of locusts. The Statesman tells us that in Morocco, on the African coast, famine is being felt in its most terrible form. Three millions of people are affected by it. The towns are thronged with sick fugitives from the horrors of starvation, while many are unable to reach them, and fall by the way. The crops are a complete failure, and no relief in the way of rain can benefit the starving population for many months. Relief committees are at work in London, Gibraltar, and other towns nearer the scene; England and France have sent grain; the appeal of the London committee is full of touching incidents described by eye-witnesses, among whom are Sir Drummond Hay, the British Minister at the Court of Morocco, and the consul at Mogadore; both have been working in order to solicit aid, and both are superintending relief. Their reports are sadly supplemented by last week's report of the United States Consul at Tangiers to the State Department at Washington; he remarks that the “suffering is terrible, that the cattle are dying by thousands, want of rain being the cause of the distress and famine.”—Religious Intelligencer.