Formerly, famines were not infrequent in Hindostan, which was owing to an insufficient fall of rain at the proper season and consequent failure of the crops. One occurred in the year 1770, in which thirty millions of people are said to have perished in the valley of the Ganges. This Patna granary was doubtless one of a number which it was intended should be built throughout the country and filled with grain in times of plenty to supply the people in case of famine, like those in the cities of ancient Egypt which Joseph filled with corn in the seven years of plenteousness and opened in the seven years of dearth, when "famine waxed sore in the land." But the building of the Ganges Canal and the railroads have rendered it almost impossible that a widespread calamitous famine should again occur in this section of India—the former by providing a more thorough system of irrigation, and the latter by affording means for the rapid and easy transportation of food from one province to another. The extent of the recent famine has been grossly exaggerated. Had certain public works—the construction of railroads and other sources of communication and of canals for the irrigation of the rice-fields—which the government contemplated prior to the outbreak of the distress, been completed, probably no reckless, sensational reports of "a disaster which had no parallel in the history of human misery" would have reached our ears.
In the long street already mentioned as extending from Bankipore to Patna is situated the government opium manufactory and warehouse. March and April are the months in which opium is made: at the time of my visit it was being packed and prepared for shipment to China. The various buildings are of brick, and the grounds are surrounded by a high wall. Entering one of the gates, I passed a Sepoy sentinel, and a little farther on some stone barracks. I then entered one of the largest buildings, and found about a hundred natives, with a European superintendent, busily engaged in weighing and packing the drug. The juice of the poppy-plant is brought in by the farmers from the surrounding country in stone jars, and has the appearance of thick tar. It is placed in large tanks, well worked up, and then dried in the sun. Next, cases are made about six inches in diameter, resembling cannon-balls, of alternate layers of thin poppy-leaves, of the poppy-flowers and of the liquid juice, and these are an inch in thickness. The whole interior is then filled with the viscous fluid, and the balls are placed to dry in earthenware cups upon immense shelves with which many entire buildings are filled. The balls weighed two seers (four pounds), and were worth thirty-two rupees (sixteen dollars) each. They were packed in long wooden boxes with thin partitions, rolled in poppy-leaves. There were forty balls in a box, which was worth when filled twelve hundred and eighty rupees or six hundred and forty dollars. About three thousand natives were employed in this manufactory.
From Patna I went on to Benares, the Mecca of Hindooism, where for the space of two weeks I was royally fêted by Maharajah Isuree Pershod, chief of the four great castes of the Hindoos.
Frank Vincent, Jr.
BEHIND THEIR FANS.
FROM THE FRENCH OF GUSTAVE DROZ.
Last evening I was guilty of a very shameful action. I hid behind a curtained door and listened to a conversation, and, what makes it still more unpardonable in me, I cannot help telling you what I heard. It was this.
I had been at the ball about half an hour when I saw in a corner of the parlor, through the door which leads into the conservatory, a little group of three young girls arrayed in billows of white muslin, who were talking behind their fans with so much animation that it was impossible not to notice them.