hungering multitude at all. Train after train left Madras and many hundreds of sacks were duly deposited at the different wayside stations. But the bullocks that should have drawn the carts with the grain to the distant villages were dead, and their owners were too enfeebled to do the work of their cattle and draw the carts themselves. They had not even the strength to crawl to the spots where the sacks lay, but died in their villages just as their cattle had died. The railway was unable to remove the whole of the grain. Damaged by exposure to the weather and rendered unfit for food, the rest of it was eventually thrown into the sea, its presence in its putrefying condition being a menace to the sanitation of the beach. Could it have been forwarded into the heart of the country, it is by no means certain that it would have brought relief to the drought-stricken people. Of what use is meat without drink? Frenzied human beings and panting animals may stand knee-deep in corn and yet die in agony if they have not water.
Terrible stories were told by historians of the straits to which the people were reduced by famines in the old days before there were railways to distribute the grain, or to carry the multitudes to the water-springs that were not exhausted. Men and women in the throes of starvation were like beasts, ready to tear each other to pieces in the madness of their hunger, and to slay each other for a cup of water. They even cast hungry glances upon their own offspring, whom they would have robbed of their portion or even murdered to lessen the number of clamouring mouths if they dared. Details too horrible for repetition remain on record in the letters written to the Board of Directors by the Englishmen who served in the East India Company. In 1630-1 and again in 1647 accounts were sent to England of a desolate land, of dead bodies lying unburied and unburned outside the
