OCR Text |
Show I. ;V.' - FAMOMIIS ' TERRIBLE SUFFERING IN BRAZIL ! ! ' New York, Sept. 26. A terrible story of famine and pestiienoeis told by heEvening Post's correspondent in Rio De Jeneiro. A district in BrazM, equal in extent to the New England, middle and Atlantic s'ates, West Virginia, Ohio and Indiana combined, has been without rain since July, 1876. Brooks, springs and wells long ago dried up. People perishing for want of food and water, have lied from their homes, many of them dying, sometimes whole families together, before reaching a place of refuge. Those of them who escaped have overcrowded over-crowded the cities of refuge so greatly as, ; 'n some cases, to multiply the population ' 'by five, and they aro now herded togethor . .in the open streets, living like swine, upon f .scanty rations issued by the government, ,aud upon such refuse as they can gather , in the gutlqrs. Well nigh naked and utterly ut-terly debased by their Hutforings thoy live in bestial immortality, not scrupling even ;to resort to cannabalism in some instances, while small pox, yellow fever, dysentery, ,and some other diseases aro sweeping them away by thousand. As if to leave i no comcu; of wretchedness out of acconrit; they are victims of the moBt brutal ill-trealment ill-trealment at the hands of the police and soldiery, and worse still at the hands of vile speculators, who make trado of these wretches' woes. The picture which the correspondent presents is scarcely matched in its ghastlineBs even by the old records of Oriontal pbgue, and the story is more distressing by reason of the fact that these people were peaceful herdsmen and plant ers, cultivators or the soil, whose homes have been made desolate by a cause which could not be foreseen or provided against. Their woes are not thoBc of men who have chosen a life of crime, but those of an industrious in-dustrious agricultural people, afflicted 'first with drought, then with famine, then with ! pestilence, and finally with that loss of moral Bouse which brutalizes men without the choice of their will. We have known only that in parts of Brazil the rainy season sea-son has failed, but we have not hitherto dreamed that such a famine as this afflicted afflict-ed so vast a territory. Ex. |