To the Editor of the "Norta-Caixa Darty News."
Sir,—I have just read a report on famine conditions in the Tientsin Prefecture, supplied by Father Corset of the Lazarist Mission, to the Bishop in Peking, and reproduced in your weekly edition to hand to-day.
Although one finds it difficult not to exaggerate the effects of the terrible catastrophe upon the inhabitants of the Chihli plain, to my mind it is incumbent upon those of us who live in North China to supply the public with as accurate details as possible of the extent and relative intensity of the distress in the various /sien affected, and to avoid generalizations which ca not be substantiated after care fi investigation Tt would appear that the good Father has been misinformed as to the degree of distress now obtaining in certain of the districts noted in his report, and with all due respect to him and his associates I beg to state the conclusions of my colleague, Dr. Prescott and myself, after lengthy tours recently undertaken in the Asien concerned for the express purpose of gathering first hand information.
In regard to Tsangchow county, with the exception of a very bad patch in the extreme south in the vicinity of the market village of Wangssu, and some poor crops to the west of this city, the average harvest gathered this month in the whole /sien can be reasonably estimated at six-tenths of the normal. For some distance round about the city the returns have been considerably above the~average, indeed 10 days ago while travelling from Nanpi to Tsangchow (60 li) 1 passed through the best fields of Indian corn I had seen during a fortnight's tour six hsien.
My companions agreed that it constituted an eight-tenths harvest. In our opinion Tsangchow cannot be said to be famine stricken, certainly not in comparison with the abject misery and distress existing in Yenshan and Kingyun.
spent a week of hard travelling in these Asien and can support the statements of Father Corset in regard to the territory N. E. E. and S. E. of Yenshan city, and that 10 the N. and OF. of Kingyun. The condition of the people living in these regions is pitiable in the extreme, and help is sorely needed 28 speedily as possible to save them from starvation, but Yenshan relatively much harder hit than its neighbour.
The population of these subprefectures are given by Father Corset as Yenshan 450,000, Kingyun 250,000, whereas according to the Chinese Postal Guide (ninth issue) which is considered the most accurate authority to-day, the figures supplied are 277,792, and 133,229, respectively.
I have myself corroborated these statistics for Yenshan after a careful scrutiny of the records given by each police division of the hsien in the most recent yamen returns.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.