igio] British Rule in India. 95 



is hottest and the whole earth seems to be a fiery furnace the greatest 

 danger of epidemics (especially cholera) occurs. Then you see the qual- 

 ity of the men of the civil service and medical service and the mission- 

 aries for throughout it all they will be found at their posts even if 

 their life is the price of their duty. As an illustration: — In the 

 Panch Mahals district in the Bombay Presidency in the famine of 

 1900 cholera broke out suddenly in one of the relief camps and with 

 such violence that in three days the dead numbered thousands. The 

 people fled panic stricken and spread the disease far and wide, while 

 the native assistants and camp attendants deserted in large numbers, 

 leaving the European officers themselves to collect and burn the dead. 

 On the other hand the power of efficient organization was well displayed 

 in the management of a cholera outbreak in 1897 in a relief camp in the 

 United Provinces. The country had been divided into circles in which 

 small works were mapped out. On the first outbreak of cholera the 

 people on the large relief work were broken up into parties of about 500 

 and marched with full staff and equipment to the circle in which their 

 villages were situated. Here they found small works ready for them, 

 the wells had been disinfected, work was commenced at once; there 

 was no panic and the pestilence was stayed. 



As the monsoon approaches the policy changes, it is in the interest 

 of the country at large as well as of the people themselves that ordinary 

 agricultural conditions should be restored with the least possible delay, 

 and that as large an area as possible should be sown. For this purpose 

 the people are moved from the large works to small works near their 

 villages about the end of May, and liberal advances are made for the 

 purchase of ploughs, cattle and seed. Then as soon as ploughing be- 

 gins most of the people leave the works but they are left open until the 

 first harvest is ripe and at the close of the rains large quantities of quinine 

 are distributed free as fever usually follows. Then the works are grad- 

 ually closed and the famine is over. 



Such then is in brief outline the general policy of the Govern- 

 ment to meet famine conditions, but this account would 

 not be complete without giving you some idea of what an Indian 

 famine means. As an example under native rule a great famine 

 occurred in parts of the Bombay Presidency in 1631. A Dutch 

 trader visited part of the afflicted country and gives the following de- 

 scription. Only II out of 260 families at Swally survived the famine in 

 that year. The road thence to Surat was covered with bodies decaying 

 on the highway where they died. In Surat, that great and crowded city, 

 hardly any living persons could be seen, but the corpses at the corners of 

 the streets lie 20 together, nobody burying them. 300,000 had perished 



