Englishmen are slow to believe that whole territories can be
depopulated by starvation, but it seems evident that in some districts of Asia Minor entire tribes and scores of villages are perishing from hunger, while the worst accounts of the Persian famine of 1872 appear to be authentic. According to the Cologne Gazette, the English arbitrators who traversed Seistan to settle boundaries travelled days without seeing a child, and estimated the mortality at 1,500,000,—more than a quarter, or on Sir H. Rawlinson's calculation, more than a third of the population. There has been no improvement in government since the Shah's visit, the soldiers still plunder at will, and if the present system lasts a generation Persia will be a desert, to be occupied by Russia at discretion. Even now it may be doubted if it has any real power.
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