By this time the rains had set in. The trails—and the leeches that infested them—were getting worse and worse. Soon the torrent-streams would become impassable. We must return while yet we could. Our six weeks’ wanderings we retraced in four days of constant tramping. It had been a hard trip for all of us. I myself had a touch of fever. It seemed good on reaching our camp to have once more the luxury of a chair and a table. And then to be on the sadaw’s back travelling homewards, and to meet a good mail on the way! My three-score and fourth birthday was spent in the forest, and I reached home safely on the 18th of May, after an absence of nearly five months.
The peninsula of Farther India is largely exempt from the terrible scourge of famine which has become almost chronic in Hindustan, its greater neighbour on the west. There the population is so numerous that the normal production of food is just sufficient to supply its needs. Even a local or a partial failure of the crops must produce distress. Siam, on the contrary, is happy in that it not only produces an abundant supply for its own people, but is a granary for the surrounding countries. The worst that has ever been experienced in Lower Siam in years of greatest scarcity, has been the necessity of checking the export of rice. The annual floods there cover the whole country, so that a general failure of crops is, humanly speaking, impossible.
In the northern states the land is higher; and considerable portions of it, being above inundation, are directly dependent upon the seasonal and local rains. But with a population by no means dense, this very diversity of the cultivated areas is a source of safety. A season of heavy rainfall which drowns the lowland rice, is apt to prove exceptionally good for the uplands. And, on the other hand, a season of light rainfall, which cuts short the upland crop, is apt to be a good season for the flooded areas. And in considerable sections of the country there is the chance that a second crop in the same season may make good the loss of the first. There is a further security also in the fact that, until communication with the coast becomes such as to make exportation profitable, the excess of fruitful years remains unconsumed in the country, to supply the need of less fruitful ones. It thus comes about that scarcity amounting to a real famine cannot result from the failure of crops in any single year. It requires two consecutive failures to produce extensive suffering among the very poor, and three to result in a real famine.
This last, however, was the case in 1892. In 1890 there was a light crop throughout the land, with less excess than usual to be stored. In 1891 the crop was lighter still. In the eastern provinces, particularly in Lakawn and Prê, there was very little rice to be reaped. Famine conditions began there long before the time for harvest. People were scattering off in squads or by families into Chiengmai and the northern provinces, begging a daily morsel. They were poverty-stricken as well as famishing. The distress led the brethren in Lakawn to make an appeal to friends in the United States for a famine fund. Quite a liberal response, amounting to several thousand dollars, was made to this call, largely by the friends of the Lāo mission. The relief was almost as timely for the missionaries as it was for the famishing people. Otherwise they scarcely could have lived through the long strain on their nerves and sympathies caused by the constant sight of sufferings which they could not even in part relieve.
The province of Chiengmai could have met its own needs until the new crop came in, had it not been for the constant draft upon its reserves to meet the demands of Lakawn and Prê. But, between high prices offered and pity for the less fortunate, those reserves were steadily drained away, until, during the latter months of the year, famine was upon us in Chiengmai, too. Bands of men from destitute villages, maddened by hunger and unable to buy food, began to roam about the country by night, or, sometimes, by day, and seize rice wherever any little remnant of it could be found. The authorities were powerless to restrain them or to keep order. The condition of the more destitute provinces can better be imagined than described.
At last the relief committee in Lakawn were asked if they could not spare us a small portion of their fund, for it seemed that their condition could not be much worse than ours. A letter from Dr. W. A. Briggs brought us three hundred rupees, but with the following caveat—the italics are his:
“Wherever we can reach the absolutely starving, that is a place to invest. We do not pretend to relieve all the suffering. Now, if the need in Chiengmai, or in the district mentioned, is so great that people are actually dying from starvation, and those now living are living on such stuff as the sample enclosed (cocanut-husks, leaves, bark, etc.), with never a grain of rice, then I would advise you to form a Famine Committee, and go into the business as we have done. The actual starvation must be attended to, no matter where it is. But our saddest experience is within Prê. Some one should be sent there at once.”
The scenes reported from Prê were harrowing. I will not pain the reader by dwelling upon them. One happy result followed the efforts of the brethren who went to the relief of that district. While administering to bodily wants, they preached the Gospel, making such an impression that there was a strong demand for a permanent station there—which was established the next year, with Dr. and Mrs. Briggs as pioneer missionaries.
It should be stated that, toward the last, the Siamese government sent up supplies of rice; but, because of the distance and the difficulty of transportation, not much reached the suffering people in time to help them; and much was lost in passing through the hands of so many officials.