THE FAMINE IAN CHINA.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.1 SIR,—The dearth in China to which Sir Thomas Wade has lately drawn attention, and which is perhaps the widest-spread and most fearful scourge that has befallen humanity for the last two hundred years, began first in the autumn of 1875. Its immediate cause was the long absence of rain, but the phenomenon to which it was and still is primarily due is the gradual desic- cation of the vast plains of Chihli and Shantung, a pro- cess which, commencing in the table-lands of Central Asia, has now reached the densely-populated northern provinces of China. For the last two years I have been in constant communication with the famine-stricken districts, and the letters I have received from day to day can only be described as sicken- ing. Fancy, Sir, a tract of country larger than thirteen Switzer- lands a prey to want that it is well-nigh impossible to relieve. The people's faces are black with hunger ; they are dying by thousands upon thousands. Women and girls and boys are openly offered for sale to any chance wayfarer ; when I left the country, a respectable married woman could be easily bought for six dollars, and a little girl for two. In cases, however, where it was found impossible to dispose of their children, parents have been known to kill them sooner than witness their prolonged sufferings, in many instances throwing themselves afterwards down wells, or committing suicide by arsenic. Corpses lay rotting by the highway, and there was none to bury them. As for food, the population subsisted for a long time on roots and grass ; then they found some nourishment in willow-buds, and finally ate the thatches off their cottages. The bark of trees served them for several months, and last July I received specimens of the stuff the unhappy creatures had been by that time reduced to. The most harmless kind was potato-stalks, tough, stringy fibres, which only the strongest teeth could reduce to pulp, and which entirely defied all my attempts at deglutition. The other description of " food"—I hardly expect credence, but I have seen it myself— was red slatestone. It appears that this substance when rolled about in the mouth and chewed will eventually split into small splinters, which can be swallowed after practice. To such frightful extremities have the famine-stricken people in China been put. I might fill many of your broad columns with even more shocking details still, but I think I have said enough.
The chief, indeed I may say the only, assistance which has hitherto been proffered has come from foreigners in the open ports, the missionaries, both Protestant and Catholic, acting as their almoners. Many wealthy Chinese have also given liberally, but the misery increases, and more help is urgently required. Surely the re- cital of so appalling a calamity will be sufficient to enlist sympathy
for the suffering Chineae ? If not, let me urge their claims two • political grounds. There is no doubt that the present diatiesa and the noble generosity of foreigners in the East have combined to produce a very warm and grateful feeling towards us on the part of all the natives. The sight of so much self-sacrificing labour and Christlike self-forgetfulness as have been displayed by the Missionaries throughout these troubles has filled the Chinamen with aetonishment. It has opened their eyes entirely.- " What," they are reported to have said on one occasion, when thousands of them came flocking round the missionaries who had brought them such timely succour, " are these the foreigners we have heard so much about,—the malignant, unscrupulous, de- ceitful foreigners? Well, we will never speak ill of them again, nor- believe what the Mandarins tell us of them. The Mandarins leave us to die of starvation, while the foreigners they have taught us to hate are spending their very lives in saving ours." This is but a faint representation, Sir, of the new-born good-will of the Chinese people to us, and it is well that their friendship and gratitude- should be cemented by further deeds of mercy.—I am, Sir, &c.,
FREDERICK H. BALFOUR.
52 1Velbeck. Street, Cavendish Square.
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