The news from the famine-stricken districts of Russia grows worse.
It is evident from all letters received, that in the worst provinces, like Orenburg, Voronezh, and others, the bonds of society are loosening, the peasants, in despair, forming themselves into bands of brigands and looting the houses of all who have anything left. The doctors, too, are flying, the peasantry betraying that strange hostility to them which is often manifested during calamities in semi-civilised countries. They are believed to propagate, it will be found when we receive fuller accounts, the hunger-typhus. The frauds in the manufacture of bread still continue, and according to the Lancet of the 23rd inst., the bread now eaten contains 30 per cent. less starch than ordinary but good rye- bread, and 10 per cent. of woody fibre, husk, &c., which cause violent indigestion. No less than 5'63 per cent. of the bread, which, it is carefully explained, is an unfairly good specimen, consists of mineral matter, against 1.5 which is usually found in good bread. The writer of this analysis hears from a friend in Russia that in some instances the bread contains no rye- flour whatever, being all made up of "wild arrock, potatoes, chaff, and leaves," and that within two versts of his house there are a hundred and thirty cases of typhus. " Most of the cattle have been sold, and this for derisive sums." The distress is expected, says the analyst, to last long, and extends over twenty-seven millions of people. It is almost useless under such circumstances to talk of; help, except from a great Government.
Previous page
