The drought is reinforced by another calamity: the grasshoppers. In some places the grasshoppers have devoured what little harvest it was hoped: to be able to gather.
'A missionary who has witnessed this plague writes me as follows:
have just come from.... It is terrible: at the moment of the harvest the poor people have not Been able to gather anything whatever. Their autumn harvest which seemed passably good has: been devoured by the grasshoppers. Nothing is left in the fields with the exception of the stems of the millet which make asad appearance without leaves or grain and then, of course, millions and millions of grasshoppers.
have never seen anything like it: the grasshoppers are in groups and in certain places so completely cover the ground that the wheels of the cart have to go through them.
"If by any chance there still remains a few fields still having their green crop you may see the grasshoppers devour everything, leaves as well as grain.
"The poor people have driven off the grasshoppers for about 20 days but without result; besides, they have gone about it in a deplorable manner, being content with pushing the grasshoppers away in front of them, in other words if the grass. hoppers do not feed here they will feed over there. The mandarin has done everything possible: for more than three weeks be has been everywhere hiring men by the hundred to chase the grasshoppers and placing policemen in every village reached by the plague so as to superintend
avail. the work, but everything was of no Tapre 18 Famine 1N THE Lanp.
"Finally, seeing themselves absolutely inundated with grasshoppers, the people have lost courage and given up completely. And one may now sce these people eating sparingly their harvest which they have been forced to cut while still green and such wild plants which they are able to find either in the fields or in the mountains. And we are only autumn; what will winter be like? It will be a most terrible famine which may already be foreseen by the actual price demanded for grain. If they wish to sell their land, what prices do they get? Land which formerly was worth $24 to $30 is now offered at $5 and even then no buyer is coming forward. If they want to borrow money they cannot find anybody willing to lend them.
"If only the famine confined itself to one or two villages, but it is a question of an entire region. As a consequence it is incessant clamour for help, for permission to work without payment, requests to sell women and children to the Sisters. I cannot of course give everyone ame What will the end A Horetess Trex.
Another missionary writes _regarding the famine in his district "Many poor people have sold everything they possessed at ridiculously low prices and have set out for Shansi but when they arrived at the mountain passes they were stopped because also in Shansi the harvest is not good this year either and people came streaming over there from everywhere and in much too large numbers. Now these people are coming back sad, starved and not finding anything whatever in their homesteads. What can be done? Abundant and immediate help is necessary."
Fuicar from out THE SHapow.
Another writes from Shuntefu "The poor, more especially the women, invest my house asking for assistance; with pangs of the heart not to be able to do more I give all I can to. still their hunger. As short a while ago as yesterday the whole road from the North Gate to the hospital of the Sisters was nothing but a mass of wheel-barrows loaded with everything helenaing to these people who have abandoned their homesteads; entire village emigrate.
"One sees people of every age: poor mothers carrying or leading their children who ery from hunger, poor old men and women (I have seen one old woman of §0) are carried by their children on wheelbarrows. And it is every day that one sees this sad stream of human beings. It is simply heartrending.
"In such a misery the cases of suicide are not infrequent: I am told that in such a village such and such a man has hanged hiniself; that in another a certain family having used up all. their provisions mixed poison in their last meal so that all the members of the family were able to dic together. Such scenes renew themselves everywhere. The poor people ask themselves anxiously what is going to happen. As a matter of fact they do not see any way out of the desperate situation. Many families have made up their mind to emigrate. They sell their daughters, their wives, and at what prices
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.