The Nineteenth Century.

Herbert Paul.

I.

While war to the death is being fought out in one division of our Empire, in another a far different struggle is afoot, whose object is not death but life. It is a quiet war eclipsed by that of arms, little gazed on by the public eye, yet not without dangers untempered by romance, or defeats which no comradeship may lighten. In 1897 the famine which raged in India touched this country to the quick, and the result was that vast national subscription, the Indian Famine Charitable Relief Fund. This year our aid is asked for a cause still nearer and dearer than the suffering Indian. But India has not forgotten former generosity; often in the last few months natives have spoken to me with feeling of the aid sent "by the Queen" or "by the mother-country" (their ideas are not always clear), and have asked if they may hope to look for it again. Indeed, the occasion, but for greater calls, is pressing enough.1

Each year produces in India two crops: the kharif, or autumn crop, which is sown in June, or as soon as the rain-laden currents of the southwest trade winds have broken upon the scorched peninsula. This crop

consists of rice and various kinds of millet; it is reaped about November. And then the rabi, or winter crop, is sown, consisting of wheat and pulse, which are reaped about April. Both crops depend upon the character of the

1 This was written before the opening of the Mansion-House Fund.-H. S.

monsoon; if it is copious, fairly sustained and varied with timely breaks of fair weather, then the autumn crop will give a large yield, and the earth will remain sufficiently moist for the germination of the winter seeds, whose plants only require a few days (traditionally three) of Christmas rain to bring them to perfection. In 1896 the monsoon did not fail; it gave copious rain; but this rain, after falling heavily, ceased prematurely, and the kharif, already well sprung up, withered away; the rabi, aided by winter rain, did generally well, but the area sown could not avert the famine of 1897, which was the result of the failure of one crop. This year the rains have failed utterly, many districts receiving only an insignificant fraction of their due; thus, not only has the kharif failed, but the ground has, in many parts, proved too hard for the sowing, or if sowing has been attempted, for the germination of the rabi. Thus, the famine of 1899-1900 will result from the failure of both crops. In 1897 fodder was generally sufficient for the cattle; to-day the cattle are dying in their thousands owing to want of food and the diseases which follow in the train of starvation. In 1897 the water supply did not give grave cause for anxiety; to-day there is many an Indian village in which not one well holds water. In 1897 the calamity fell upon people backed by the resources of many years of plenty (only in Bundelkhand and some northern parts of the Central Provinces had there been previous distress); to-day

many districts are called on to meet a fresh attack while they are still staggering under the blow of the year before last.

What is the aspect of a country which lies under the ban of famine? Our imagination summons up deserted villages; fields devoid of crops, and only whitened by the bones of cattle, perhaps of men; moanings for succor, and crowds of hopeless skeletons.

It was my fate to spend the greater part of 1897 in a district where some of this ideal was realized-a district far removed from railways, possessing but a few miles of road which would not, in the wet season, melt into a hopeless quagmire; a land of intractable mountains and impenetrable forests, of isolated villages, often inhabited, not by Hindus, but by half-savage aborigines, driven up into these inhospitable regions beyond the Aryan invader; their cultivation the rudest, their resources the slenderest, and their habits too timid and suspicious to allow them to accept the proffered aid. The isolation and physical difficulties of the tract, the sparseness of the population (it has been well remarked that the difficulties of dealing with famine are in inverse ratio to the destiny of the population), the peculiar character of the people, and the novelty of meeting so grave a disaster under circumstances so adverse made failure almost a foregone conclusion. Yet, although the mortality resulting from actual starvation and its attendant satellites, fever, dysentery and cholera, was immense, still there is to-day many an upland village where, if the visitor asks who in it was saved two years back by the aid of the Sirkar (Government), practically the whole population will come forward. The circumstances in that district were abnormal; and hence, though much was achieved, much also, painful to eye and ear, occurred there during the darkest months of 1897. But VOL. VII. 376

LIVING AGE.

now I am to speak of another and a more representative locality. It is not the most sorely stricken part of India; yet the intensity of the distress may be gauged from the fact that at the end of November more than 22 per cent. of the entire population were in receipt of Government relief, and this notwithstanding every effort of the district authorities to limit, as far as possible, the number of recipients.

II.

Let us take, then, one of the so-called "plateau districts" of the Central Provinces, a district which suffered sorely enough in 1897, but where the potentiality of suffering to-day is greater still. As we drive the sixty odd miles that separate the nearest railway station from the district headquarters, the road takes us first through a level and well-populated tract. Then come jungles; and presently we ascend a lofty hill-slope, between thick forests and towering hills, the abode of tiger, bison and bear. On reaching the summit a broad upland plain opens before us, measuring across from north to south from fifty to sixty miles, and held up, as it were, at an elevation of from two to three thousand feet above sea-level by the shoulders of the Satpura Mountains, till, on its southern boundary, it suddenly breaks down, sometimes with a sheer drop, sometimes through a tangle of wild ravines, to the broad plain of the Deccan. The upland portion is inhabited by Hindus, congregated in large villages; it includes, beside kharif land, a very large area of rabi land, producing in ordinary years a valuable wheat crop. The people are fully alive to their own needs and interests, and all that is requisite is to place the means of preservation within their grasp, enforcing a sufficient test to exclude the less needy. But on the mountain slopes,

which sink to the Nerbudda valley on the north and the Deccan plain on the south, as well as in certain scattered jungles on the plateau itself, the Hindu element ceases; there dwells the shy Dravidian aboriginal in his remote hamlet; and special measures must be adopted to entice him to his own salvation. There is something striking in the scenery of these hill slopes, especially on the southern border, where they are peculiarly steep and sudden. Were it not for the dry, keen air, the upland plain suggests no impression of elevation. It is undulating, bare and bleak, but well cultivated, and dotted here and there with populous villages and bosky mango groves. One ascends a gentle jungle-covered slope, and in a moment the land seems to break away below; and there, a thousand feet beneath, stretches the great southern plain, its fields and forests barred with morning mist, or shining with a bluish glare under the midday sun. One descends into the intervening strip of hill and jungle, and both the upper and the lower plains vanish; all around rise inhospitable peaks, divided by deep, and often rocky, gullies. Here it is as hard to believe that those same peaks support on their very tops a broad and populous champaign as it was, when standing above them, to realize that but a few steps would disclose the seemingly endless plain breaking down in sudden cliffs to the sea-like levels below. It is in this strip, sometimes but a couple of miles broad, sometimes stretching up long glens into the interior, that, wedged between two civilizations, savagery still holds its own. There dwell the Kurkus, reduced to a mere handful, remnants of an ancient Kolarian stock; there, too, far more numerous and scarcely less ancient, is found the Dravidian race of Gondsthe most important of the aboriginal races that still haunt the highlands of Central India. Among the main

range and the offshoots of these Satpura Mountains the Gonds form a large fraction of the population, ever choosing as their homes the most inaccessible retreats. Both physically and ethically they are divided into numerous sections, each more or less sunk in savagery or imbued with civilization. Thus the Marya Gond is still a naked savage; the Raj Gond, on the other hand, is, by birth and by way of living, almost a Hindu. The Gonds of the district of which I speak lie midway between these two types. The majority of them have laid aside their distinctive language (which resembles the gibbering of bats), the poisoned arrow, the destructive dhya cultivation, and other characteristics of their race. But they still retain the dark skin, the Mongolian cast of feature, the general disregard of dress. In some of the remote villages they still flee at a sahib's approach. Their women are tattooed with blue marks. Their gods are many; their kinds of marriage scarcely less so. They practice and fear witchcraft. The new régime has suppressed human sacrifice; but they rejoice in offerings of beasts, chiefly the snowwhite cock. Their villages are evilsmelling collections of huts, in each of which a rough frame of poles supports a grass roof; the walls are of grass and leaves plastered scantily with unsavory mud. Within are the mud-built grainbins, the only solid part about the edifice. In these huts the people herd with their cattle, pigs and fowls. They are passionately fond of their homes (this heimweh is a distinct obstacle to famine relief), and they can hardly be persuaded to undertake any work which will prevent their return to the village at night. When arrived there, they shut themselves in their huts, closing every aperture in the cold weather; they have no artificial light in the dark hours; they possess no blankets, and often an entire village

The site

cannot boast of a single bed. chosen for these quaint collections of dwellings is almost invariably the ridge of a hill, running down steeply to a torrent below. Among large sections of the Gonds wells are quite unknown; when summer has dried up the stream the people scoop water-holes (called jhireas) in the bed. If the bed is rocky they drink from stagnant pools, and die of cholera. In the fringe of jungle where they dwell there is little or no rabi land; the Gonds depend upon the kharif crop; they grow but little rice, sowing instead juari (Sorghum vulgare) -which is also a staple autumn produce throughout this district, as well as in most of the dry parts of India-and two small millets (kodon and kutki) peculiar to Gond-land, of which they make a rough porridge. The fare is eked out with jungle produce-roots, berries and leaves, but chiefly the sweet juicy blossoms of the mahua (Bassia latifolia), which they dry and knead into bread, and from which the intoxicating liquor, to which the Gonds are addicted, is distilled.

It is among these aboriginal villages, rather than in the populous upland plain, that the death-rate may be expected to give cause for anxiety. The people are shy, suspicious of interference, callous as to the future. The country is difficult and forbidding. A sombre melancholy seems to pervade the leafless trees that tower up at evening, range upon range, silhouetted against the faint daffodil of the Indian afterglow. The rude village in the foreground, with no light to give the homelight air of comfort, seems to lie beleaguered by the forces of a relentless power. It is like the land of the hopeless, the forgotten; heaven has closed her windows; the mountains girdle it with isolation. It is as though Nature had determined to destroy the laggards in the race for existence.

III.

But as one rides through the fields of the high plateau on a brisk November morning, there is no suggestion of any widespread calamity. The sunshine is bright, the air is keen. The villages slumber under their groves of mango or glittering pipal. The fields, indeed, are devoid of laborers; but here and there patches of emerald green show where some sanguine cultivator has risked the loss of his rabi seedstore. A close inspection, however, shows that this cheerful aspect is deceptive. The shoots of the rabi have begun to wither; already the tips of the wheat seedlings have turned white. The garners are empty, for the kharif has failed utterly. Here stands a field of juari; in ordinary seasons the plants would be green and healthy, often seven feet in height, and tipped with nodding bunches of grain; this year the crop is stunted, white and dry, only here and there the green cobs made their appearance, and then if one so much as touches them they fall into sooty dust, like apples of Sodom; kánhi (black rust) has destroyed even this meagre out-turn. Already the cattle have been let loose into these fields to eat the crop, or the people are gathering the dry rustling stems to serve as fodder. Their utility, even for this purpose, is doubtful; in years of drought a salt is secreted in the stem of the juari plant, which, unless removed by long soaking, proves poisonous to cattle. As for the rice, it could but just spring up, and will not even afford straw. The lesser millets, kodon and kutki, have eared in favorable spots, but the ears are mere empty husk; the people throw them to the cattle, or bring them as bedding for your horse, without attempting the useless work of threshing. The maize has long ago been cut down without having produced a single cob.

a

All is desolate; but suddenly familiar sound strikes the ear. It resembles that of the mowing machine, and recalls the mind to pleasant English hayfields. But even this sound, when heard in November, is fraught with dreadful significance. It means the destruction of the sugarcane-that most remunerative crop, whose cultivation requires capital, and can be attempted only by the most substantial farmers, for the saving of which, moreover, no efforts would be spared. Here are the sugar-cane enclosures, carefully fenced round against the depredations of beasts. In one the canes have already withered, sharing the fate of the unirrigated juari; another is still kept alive by a slender trickle of water raised with infinite labor and much creaking from a fortyfoot well. Slowly the bullocks draw a long rope bearing the mot (an ingeniously contrived leather bucket) to the surface; and slowly they back towards the well, to lower it for a fresh supply. If you look down you see that there is perhaps a bare half foot of water in one corner of the well-bottom. drivers tell you that they can work only one hour at a time, and must then wait for the water to replenish itself; a few more days, and irrigation will become impossible. But the noise, like that of a mowing-machine, comes from the sugar-press-a rough arrangement of spirally fluted wooden rollers-in which, four months before its time, a miserable out-turn of juice is being extracted.

The

In the morning and the evening picturesque groups gather round these irrigation wells-women with brazen water-vessels on their heads and herds of patient cattle. For the ordinary drinking wells of the village are dry, and the tanks and rivers, where the cattle are usually watered, are reduced to spaces of cracked mud, or torrid beds of black rock. For beasts, as well

as for men, the precious fluid must be raised from the bowels of the earth. In the jungle tracts, where the paucity of wells makes the supply of drinking water yet more precarious, the cattle fare better. There is still a meagre supply of grass in the forests; and the mountain rivers have bored deep holes in the rock, which here and there will hold water for many months-but such water! Sometimes a livid green, sometimes a lurid red. Hence these jungles, ordinarily deserted and abandoned to wild beasts, are now traversed in every direction by paths formed by droves of cattle, driven up from the waterless Deccan plain. Rinderpest and anthrax have been busy among these crowded, half

starved herds, and the banks of the fœtid pools are strewn with the bones of the victims; high up in the pitilessly blue sky the vultures circle, waiting for the next death and the next meal.

The forests themselves are gaunt and devoid of leaves at a time of year when all should be bright and green. The Indian October, when the long rainy season gives place again to a clear sky, is a month of chill misty mornings, heavy dews, luxuriant grass and leafage when the sun draws up the moisture of the soaked forests, and renders the climate deadly with ague and malaria. This October was devoid of its usual characteristics, and resembled May. The nights were dewless, the mornings dry and airless. As the sun rose higher the hot wind came wuthering over the parched ground, crackling among the parched branches, as in the fierce summer weather. At night I found it necessary to sleep outside, without the covering even of a sheeta practice which, in ordinary seasons, would ensure a serious attack of fever. Even the trees mistook the signs of the times; flowers and fruits, proper to April, made their appearance in November; the beautiful red palas burst