needed.

Concerning the drought, a resident of Muttra said to me that {220}
there practically no rain falls from the middle of January to the
middle of June. "In the latter part of the drought," he said, "the
fields assume the appearance of deserts; only the dull green of the
tree-leaves varies the vast, monotonous graybrown of the
far-stretching plains. The streams are dried up; the cattle hunt the
parched fields in vain for a bit of succulence to vary their diet of
dry grass. But at last there comes the monsoon and the rains--and then
the Resurrection Morning. The dead earth wakens to joyous
fruitfulness, and what was but yesterday a desert has become a
veritable Garden of Eden."

But, alas! sometimes the rains are delayed--long, tragically long
delayed! The time for their annual return has come--has passed, and
still the pitiless sun scorches the brown earth as if it would set
afire the grass it has already burned to tinder-dryness. The ryot's
scanty stock of grain is running low, the daily ration has been
reduced until it no longer satisfies the pangs of hunger, and with
each new sunrise gaunt Famine stalks nearer to the occupants of the
mud-dried hut. The poor peasant lifts vain hands to gods who answer
not; unavailingly he sacrifices to Shiva, to Kali, to all the
heartless Hindu deities of destruction and to unnamed demons as well.
The Ancient Terror of India approaches; from time immemorial the
vengeful drought has slain her people in herds, like plague-stricken
cattle, not by hundreds and thousands, but by tens of thousands and
hundreds of thousands. In Calcutta I saw several young men whom the
mission school rescued from starvation in the last great famine of
1901-02 and heard moving stories of that terrible time. Many readers
will recall the aid that America then sent to the suffering, but in
spite of the combined efforts of the British Government and
philanthropic Christendom, 1,236,855 people lost their lives. To get a
better grasp upon the significance of these figures it may be
mentioned that if every man, woman, and child in eight American states
and territories at that time (Delaware, Utah, Idaho, New Mexico,
Arizona, Montana, Wyoming, and Nevada) had been {221} swallowed up in
a night, the total loss of life would not have been so great as in
this one Indian famine.

Appalling as these facts are, it must nevertheless be remembered that
the loss would have been vastly greater but for the excellent sy