There is a touch strangely characteristic of Anglo-India in the
last letter from Calcutta published in the Times. There is a horrible famine raging in Orissa, and a great military scandal at Sank; and the scandal is described, as it would be in any Indian, drawing-room, first. In the last week of June 3,000 persons died of starrntion in Cuttack alone, one traveler in a twenty-mile journey saw 22 dead bodies, at Jagger :404h 69 persons died of starealson lit one week ; -Salaam 11,000 eeple are fed daily, anelenb, '2,000 of them arelerong enough Ova* ; and 768 deaths were eflicialiy reported in ssne week. The rsorernment, after the usual interval of incredulity, is giving relief liberally, but the great want is means of getting the rice to the people. We have had Orissa only sixty years, and of course the only good road is the one to the temple. Government cannot pre- vent bad harvests, but it can alter a tenure -which makes it bad policy for the farmer to irrigate, and can open up means of com- munication.; and it does neither, though it has repeatedly promised to do the former. These poor people are dying of starvation, with nothing but the Bay of Bengal between them and the rice granary, Arracan.
Previous page
