s if somebody had suffered from a hemorrhage or
had opened an artery, but they are only traces of the chewers of
the betel nut. The habit is no more harmful than chewing tobacco.
The influence of the juice is slightly stimulating to the nerves,
but not injurious, although it is filthy and unclean.

It is a popular impression that the poor of India live almost
exclusively upon rice, which is very cheap and nourishing, hence
it is possible for a family to subsist upon a few cents a day.
This is one of the many delusions that are destroyed when you
visit the country. Rice in India is a luxury that can be afforded
only by the people of good incomes, and throughout four-fifths of
the country is sold at prices beyond the reach of common working
people. Sixty per cent. of the population live upon wheat, barley,
fruit, various kinds of pulses and maize. Rice can be grown only in
hot and damp climates, where there are ample means of irrigation,
and only where the conditions of soil, climate and water supply
allow its abundant production does it enter into the diet of the
working classes. Three-fourths of the people are vegetarians,
and live upon what they produce themselves.

The density of the population is very great, notwithstanding
the enormous area of the empire, being an average of 167 to the
square mile, including mountains, deserts and jungles, as against
21.4 to the square mile in the United States. Bengal, the province
of which Calcutta is the capital, on the eastern coast of India,
is the most densely populated, having 588 people to the square
mile. Behar in the south has 548, Oudh in the north 531; Agra,
also in the north, 419, and Bombay 202. Some parts of India have
a larger population to the acre than any other part of the world.
The peasants, or coolies, as they are called, are born and live
and die like animals. Indeed animals seldom are so closely herded
together, or live such wretched lives. In 1900, 54,000,000 people
were more or less affected by the famine, and 5,607,000 were fed
by the government for several months, simply because there was
no other way for them to obtain food. There was no labor they
could perform for wages, and those who were fortunate enough to
secure employment could not earn enough to buy bread to satisfy
the hunger of their families. It is estimated that 30,000,000
human beings starved to death in India during the nineteenth
century, and in one year alone, the year in which that go