The severity of the famine in the N. W. Province of Shensi may be ganged from the fact that not fewer than 30 per cent of the population have fallen before the scourge. That is the official return of the death rate. It is not so high as the record of former famines, but it is a fearful fatality to result from the lack of bread. It is not because the famine was less severe than in former years and in nther places, but because there were two ameliorative cireumstances that reduced the death rate, The one was the fact that, the population being largely composed of settlers from other provinces, they had little property and few ties to keep them in this district, so not a few emigrated beyond the area of the ited without permission.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.