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Show rAiiiil Crops Fail and Many Starve London, Jan. 15. Telegrams from Stockholm confirm the distressing dis-tressing accounts of famine in northern Sweden, as given in ; these dispatches. About 30,000 : people are affected by this famine, fam-ine, which extends from the sixty-first to the sixty-seventh degree de-gree north latitude and from the Gulf of Bothnia and the Russian j border into the interior. The i starving people are eating pine j bark, which is dried, ground to I : powder, mixed with stewed Ice-1 ; land moss and made into a kind j of famine bread. 1 The peasants n re making pa-j thetic sacrifices to avert the ex- j termination of the hardy north-1 ern cattle. In previous times of i scarcity good fodder was obtainable ob-tainable by mixing reindeer moss j and aspen bark. Now, this is! not available and finally chopped ; twigs of birch, willow and ash! 1 are substituted. The mixture is j boiled and fed to the cattle warm, but it is found that the milk of cattle thus fed leads to. i typhoid fever , This and other ; diseases are certain to spread I unless relief is hastened. 1 Coincident with the failure of , the crops is the extreme scarci- ! ty of fish. The fishermen return from their expeditions empty-handed. empty-handed. Even ptarmigan, usually us-ually found in great numbers in the district, have almost com -I pletely disappeared. It is esti-: esti-: mated that the expenditure of j about $6,300,000 will be necessary neces-sary to save the population from 1 decimation. Thus far about $200,000 has been subscribed, of , j which sum over $12,500 was sent I by Swedes in the United States. j This amount does not include the money neccessary to save the breed of cattle which alone I can lire through an arctic winter, win-ter, or supply seed for the spring sowings. The situation threatens a repetition repe-tition of the terrible famine of j 1867, when thousands died of. starvation and typhoid. A spec-; spec-; ial commissioner of the Swedish 'government, who has just re-! re-! turned from the scene of the distress, dis-tress, emphasizes the necessity j for the adoption of immediate i plans to abate the distress. His ' report has caused a most painful pain-ful impression and will, it is hoped, enhance the national ef forts to provide remedial measures. meas-ures. Up to the present 1,300 carloads valued at over $100,000 represent the total quantity of provisions and fodder shipped to the famine-stricken area. |