304 PRICES 



from the famine of 1 860-61, and after that the two sets 

 of prices kept close together to the end of the century. 

 A second lesson may be derived from this chart 

 having reference to the intensity of local famines. 

 The price-curve of any one market before 1861 makes 

 no distinction between local crop failure and wide- 

 spread famine. The great famines of this period — 

 1 8 19, 1837, ^i^d i860 — are clearly marked in all price- 

 curves, standing up like the great Himalayan peaks, 

 which are visible from almost any point of view. But 

 each district had crop failures of its own, which, from 

 the intensity of sufifering they caused within a circum- 

 scribed area, loomed as large in the memory of the 

 locality, and in which prices rose as high as in the 

 great famines ; just as in the Himalayas a relatively 

 small peak which is near at hand seems to rival the 

 distant giants of the range. So numerous were these 

 local famines in the first half of the nineteenth century 

 that the projection of price-curves for several localities 

 upon one chart gives an impression that high prices 

 prevailed in that period to an extent which is not in 

 accordance with fact. These local scarcities are re- 

 corded in the histories of the districts by settlement 

 officers, and if from these histories an attempt were 

 made to record all the famines, great and small, in 

 which people had died of starvation in the first half of 

 the nineteenth century, the list would be an amazingly 

 long one, and the impression would be produced that 

 famine was almost continuous in these provinces in 

 that period. From the price-lists given at the end of 

 this chapter it is evident that famine existed in some 

 part of the province in each of the following years : 

 1804, 1809, 1S13, 1817, 1818-19-20, 1823, 1826, 1834, 

 1837-38, 1843, 1849. But of these eleven famines only 

 three (1803-04, 1819-20, and 1837-38) were widespread, 

 and under modern conditions of transport these three 

 only would have made an impression upon the public 

 of the time. 



