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year in which we arrived in India, 1877, was a dark epoch for the country. A severe famine extended throughout the length and breadth of the land. The news of it reached us before we arrived. They who have never been in a tropical land nor have travelled through a desert have no conception of what drought can do. Drooping vegetation and a parched soil may be imagined, but the suffering which a prolonged absence of rain can inflict on man and beast is not easily realised except by personal contact.

England knows nothing of gaunt raging famine. The nearest approach to such a calamity within modern times has been dearth or dearness of provisions. Under these conditions the poorest classes of Great Britain have experienced semi-starvation, or perhaps even actual starvation, causing death in some cases. But the scarcity has only affected food. Such a thing as a famine of water has happily never touched the British Isles.

Water famines are confined mostly to the countries lying under a tropical sun. It is an appalling misfortune