The cold has been very severe this winter many of the inhabitants declare: they cannot recall any previous winter when the temperature was so exceptionally low. Deaths from starvation have been numerous; in Sanyiian hsien as many as 20 in one night died from exposure. The appalling poverty led to inevitable, and in many cause fatal, distress. It were impossible in any civilised country that such unmitigated misery would be tolerated; but the Chinese, either unable or unwilling to remove the causes of so many persisting curses, calmly meet the consequences as Heaven-sent fate from which there is no escape. It is this lethal idea which dominates and fills the minds of the officials and holds the Chinese in a condition of turpitude.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.