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THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 30TM MARCII, 1861.
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tion, leaving about three-fourths of a million of maunds for the markets of the distressed Districts. Similarly the Ganges Canal must have watered land producing in 1859-60 about 63 millions of maunds of grains suited for food, and the largest estimate of the supply for local consumption within Canal villages can scarcely raise it above 43 millions, thus leaving 2 millions clear for export. Thus then these two Canals contributed in 1859-60 to the food markets of the North-West about 2 millions of maunds of grains suited for the food of man, and a corresponding quantity of straw fodder for cattle. The aggregate results during the present year will not be quite so high, both because of the failure of the Ganges Canal to protect the rain crop and of the influence of the drought on the volumes of the supplying rivers. Even however with these abatements the beneficial in- fluence of the Canals has been and will be immense.
It is impossible to make more than the very roughest guess at the probable produce of the land beyond the influence of the Canals. We are told on the highest authority, that it is only in the vicinity of wells or tanks that any crop at all exists. It must not be overlooked that the same drought which dries the soil to metallic hardness, parches up the springs, both of wells and tanks; and we greatly fear that, rigidly speaking, we ought to conclude that any Palliative from well or tank irrigation is not to be relied on. In ordinary seasons the breadth of land under cultivation in the six Districts is rather over 5 millions of acres, of which probably about three-fourths, or roughly 33 millions, are under food crops, in both harvests. It would, however, be a large estimate that would put the watered area,-wells or tanks being the sources of supply,at one-tenth of the total area, and it is from this narrow field of some 375,000 acres only, that even the most sanguine can look for any food grains in addition to those furnished by canal-irrigated lands during the current year. The yield per acre will be far below the or- dinary average. Taking one kind of grain with another, we doubt if more than one million of mannds could be calculated upon, even supposing that the wells continued moderately well supplied with water.
By the close of the present season, therefore, it may be expected that the Districts will supply from their own interior resources about 5 or 54 millions of maunds of grain, which, however, it must not be overlooked, cannot affect the markets either within or beyond irrigated tracts earlier than April next. Now for the whole food supply of the Districts between, say, the 1st of January and 15th of April 1861, not less than 75,000 maunds daily, or about & millions of maunds, must be provided, and of this quantity, it is vain to look for more than about 1, or at the very utmost 2 millions of maunds from the produce of the Districts themselves, even with all the help irrigation can have giver them. Hence 6 millions at least must be imported either by aid of private enterprise or by the action of Government.
We have previously estimated the proportion of the population which will be reduced in the course of the season to absolute destitution at about 1 millious. It is possible that this number may only be gradually arrived at, and allowing for this, we may take an average of only a million to be fed. Reducing rations of food to Famine standard for men, women and children alike, and economising to the utmost we think justifiable, we cannot see how life is to be maintained among them for those 34 months for any smaller supply of grain then about 1 million of maunds, the whole of which must be issued either without return at all, or for the only return these wre ched people can offer their personal labor. Now 14 millions of maunds are 50. millions of seers, and taking superior and inferior foed-grains together, it will probably not be excessive to assume the averago bazaar rate at 12 seers for the Rupee. Whence we conclude that from 4 to 44 millions of Rupees, or £150,000 sterling, must be expended on food alone to avert the frightful possibilities of the next few months. The alternative is, that the people must be allowed to perish by tens of thousands, while we stand by in pitifal imbccility. And even if we were to succeed in tiding the stream of misery over the immediate crisis, and suppose the sufferers to have all the help which the harvest to be reaped in the Spring can give them, we have beyond that time equally dark prospects, if they be not even darker than have now to be looked at and thought of.
We leave these details to the consideration of our readers. We know well they will create among them a deep and uni- versal sympathy. They will see that, tone down our descriptive terins are cautiously as we may, it is a calamity that cannot be painted otherwise than as awful which we ask them to contemplate. It has ceased to be imminent, and is among us with all its sad and ghastly features, growing gradually larger and more stern. The measures of mitigation adopted by the Govern- ment are but as drops in the ocean. They scarcely penetrate beyond the merest surface of the misery, or meet it to even the tithe of a title of its lenght and breadth. What are a few loaves and fishes among so many? Sixty thousand pounds is a generous donation even for a Government, and especially for a Government harassed on all bands by financial difficulties of the gravest kind.
But its expenditure will barely be felt in mitigation of the great woe, and it must be multiplied many-fold, if it is to produce any material impression upon it. The community, we believe, only awaits the signal from Government, that its help is needed and would be welcome, to come forward with that broad and generous liberality which has never been known to turn away from a righteous appeal. And there are communities beyond our own, who would at once open their hearts and hands to such claims as the present. We believe the time has come to state them with all the force which official authority can give to them. We trust very soon to see the Government and the community working earnestly together to lighten the great burden of suffering and sorrow which those unhappy Districts will have to bear.-[Friend of India, 10th January, 1861.]
THE FAMINE IN THE NORTH-WEST AND THE PUNJAB.
The circle of suffering widens, as we had led our readers to expect it must widen, with the mere lapse of time. To the districts in the North-Western Provinces before indicated must now be added that of Agra and the whole of the Delhi Territoty. There are grounds for the gravest anxiety regarding the prospects of the Cis-Sutlej Districts, and unless the rain we have lately had here las extended beyond the Sutlej, the Spring crop even up to the West of the Indus will be in jeopardy. We have looked to the vast wheat fields of the Punjab as one of the great granaries for the districts East of the Sutlej, but if failure of rain there too should destroy the hope of a present harvest it will prove a deplorable aggravation of the general misery. It is as yet however only possible that such a result may have to be met; it will not be matter of certainty till ten or twelve days hence. What is certain at this moment, however, is that to the number of people previously stated as the population of the famine- struck districts must now be added about 31⁄2 millions more, making the whole in round numbers about 7 millions. And of these we believe we may take about 24 millions as representing the proportion at present wholly incapable of self-support, either from want of means to purchase food or from physical incapacity. When once the grip of the famine has laid hold firmly of a Some of the details laid before the Public district, the rapidity with which its influence spreads is startling and terrible. Meeting in Calcutta on the 21st instant, and the accounts which appear from time to time in the North West Journals, illas- trate this very strikingly. Many there were quite unprepared to learn that in the Delhi Districts crowds of human beings were living on the raw berries of the jungle; that thousands had lost all ability to move near to the means of subsistence and were perishing in their desolate villages, that the village accountants who were able to keep up their records, recorded littlo else than the deaths of their people from lack of food. Yet these facts were supported by the highest local authority and con- firmed to the meeting by the testimony of an earnest and intelligent eye-witness. The raising of the curtain on such scenes of misery must quicken sympathy and stimulate action, while it brings into clear view the swift march of the calamity with which we have to contend. The demands of the sufferers have grown of course with the growth of their numbers. To feed the whole at famine rates will require about 34 millions of maunds of grain, the cost of which would be about 121 millions of Rupees or £1,250,000.
The community of Calcutta has thus far responded nobly to the appeal of the Chamber of Commerce. In three days up- wards of thirty thousand rupees have been placed at the command of Pa Comunittee, and Die stream of charity is still, we trust, far below its full flood. Madras and Bombay-will doubtless move at once, and if the tulings of these sufferings touch, as toncli they will, the warm sympathies of the people at home, they will not deny to millions of the native subjects of the Queen that nificent charity which they are now pouring out of thousands of the suffering subjects of the Sultan. There is no great
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