Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/172

 about which there can be no doubt, are famines, droughts, inundations, and the ravages of insects. These are said to have been of constant and almost regular recurrence. Earthquakes, though apparently not doing any great mischief, except in one instance when the marble pillars of the Emperor's palace were thrown down in the reign of Hsiao Wu Ti, of the Eastern Tsin dynasty, appear to have occurred more frequently than is generally supposed to have been the case in China. Far greater are the ravages that have been caused by storms. These have constantly destroyed the crops of entire districts in a few hours, and are described as violent in the extreme, having been frequently accompanied with thunderbolts and showers of destructive hail. Indeed, it seems wonderful that the unfortunate people ever reaped any harvests at all, when we read the list of forces arrayed against them. If there were no inundations, sweeping away the produce of their fields, to say nothing of the houses in which they lived and occasionally the men themselves, there was pretty sure to be a drought; or if not a drought, a swarm of grasshoppers or of locusts would devastate the plains, selecting, as, with a sort of infernal instinct, such creatures do, the richest and most fertile districts as their prey. The sufferings of the people in such fatal years are said to have reduced them frequently to cannibalism. They preyed upon each other; they fed themselves on corpses. On three occasions an array of rats invaded the country. In one instance these insatiable vermin, travelling from one place to another, attempted a passage of the Wei river, and were fortunately drowned, their carcasses choking up the banks of the stream for several