CHAPTER,IX,
THE LAND OF FAMINE.
ANY review of Darkest India would be incomplete without some mention of the widespread and calamitous famines which periodically devastate the country and which reappear from time to time with terrible certainty.
In a country where so large a proportion of the population is agricultural, and where the poor are almost entirely paid in kind, the failure of a single crop means the most terrible scarcity and privation for those who even in time of plenty live at best but a hand-to-mouth existence. And when the failure is repeated famine faces the poverty-stricken masses, and they are frequently swept off by thousands.
In the terrible Madras famine of 1877 to 1878, several millions perished, in spite of the relief works and charitable agencies which hastened to their assistance. When the census of 1881 came to be taken, it was found that in this part of India, instead of the population having largely increased, as was everywhere else the case, there hud been a diminution of two per cent as compared with tlie census of 1871. •
It may be said that such famines are -not frequent and we are thankful to admit that this is so. Yet scarcely a year passes without sonic part of India suffering severely from partial droughts. Only last year hundreds of poor starving wretches, crowded into Bombay from Kattiyawar, and were for weeks encamped on the Esplanade, an abject multitude, dependent on the charity of the rich. And yet it was " no famine " that had driven them hundreds of miles "from their homes, but " only a scarcity."