An intense famine prevailed in Persia. The harvests of 1869, 1870, and 1871 proved deficient from various causes. The slight fall of rain had diminished the natural reservoirs, and many of the invaluable subterranean canals fell dry. The Persian population live much on fruit, but at Isfahan the fruit harvest was a failure. Thus cereals, water, and fruit were cut of.
1874. Bengal suffered from drought. In 1871 the rainfall bad been excessive, but in 1872 it was deficient.
In 1873, also, in Bengal and Behar, the autumn rains were scanty, and in 1874 frost and west winds dried up the crops. In those two districts a scarcity of rice occurred. Sir George Campbell, then Lient-Governor, Sir Richard Temple, and the Viceroy, Lord Northbrook, arranged for the importation of rice, of which half a million of tons were poured into the districts where scarcity prevailed, obtained from the Panjab, N.W. Pro vinces, Madras, and Burma ; the last - named district alone sent 289,534 tons. Fifty miles of railroad were constructed at the rate of a mile a day ; military officers were employed to aid in the distribution, private charity largely aided, and hardly twenty persons died. The population in reality lived on other grains and pulses. But it cost the Government about nine millions sterling. Macaulay, noticing the former famine there, says In the summer of 1770 the rains failed ; the earth was parched up, the tanks were empty, the rivers shrank within their beds ; and a, famine, such as is known only in countries where every household depends for support on its own little patch of cultivation, filled the whole valley of the Ganges with misery and death. Tender and delicate women, whose veils had never been lifted before the public gaze, came forth from the inner chambers in which Ea,stern jealousy had kept watch over their beauty, threw themselves on the earth before the passers-by, and with loud wailings implored a handful of rice for their children. The Hoogly every day rolled down thousands of corpses close to the porticoes and gardens of the English conquerors. The very streets of Calcutta were blocked up by the dying and the dead. The lean and feeble survivors had not energy enough to bear the bodies of their kindred to the fnneral pile or to the holy river, or even to scare away the jackals and vultures who fed on human remains in thr,‘ face of day.' 1874-75. Severe farnine in Asia Minor ; the deaths up to July 1874 were 150,000.
1877-78. One of the moat severe nnd most extended families on record occurred in tho Peninsula of India, in the Madras Presidency, blymore, part of tho Bombay Presidency, and lasting from tho end of 1876 till tho middle of 1878.
The 1876 S.W. monsoon rains were deficient all over the Madras Presidency and in the Poona district, and the N.E. rains utterly failed. The drought in Bombay extended to nine districts jin the Dekhan and Southern Mahratta country, including Kandesh, Nasik, Ahmadnaggtv, Poona, 1Sholapur, Satara, Kaladgi, Belgaum, and Muir -war ; and adjoining native states, Kolhapur, Phultun, Akulkote, and Sawuntwari, also suffered. The area of this territory, exclusive of native states, comprises about 54,000 square miles, and the total population amounts to eight millions, of which five millions were included in the tracts immediately affected. By October 1876 all the nine of the Bombay Dckhan districts were threatened with famine, as nearly all the monsoon crops had perished, and the spring and summer rains failed, and rain fell short all over India ; there were scarce rains also in Egypt, Morocco, and Brazil. In Madras famine affected the districts of Cuddapah, 13ellary, Nellore, Kurnool, Madura, North Arcot, Salem, Chingleput, Coimbatore, Kistna, nopoly, and Tanjore. In Mysore, and also some part of the Nizam's country, the area of the I distressed districts amounted approximately to 80,000 square miles, and the total population affected to nearly 18 millions.
In the beginning of 1878, a trial census was taken of the districts of N. Arcot, Bellary, Chingleput, Coirnbatore, Cuddapah, Kistna, Kur nool, Madras town, Madura, Nellore, and Salem. in these, in 1875-76, the deaths were 340,545 ; but in 1876-77 they increased to 925,103, or 67 per thousand of the population of 13,765,165. According to the estimated population at the end of 1876, tho losses were in Mary. 21 per cent. ; Kurnool, 27 per cent. ; Cuddapah, 26 per cent. ; Nellore, 21 per cent ; Coimbatore, 17 per cent. ; Chingleput, 10 per cent The Salem district estimated population in 1876 was 2,129,850. The actual population on the 14th of March 1878 was 1,559,876,—that is, there were 569,956 souls in this one district, or nearly 27 per cent of the people, unaccounted for. And in this Salem district the famine distress was not then over.