Famine is chronic in India.  It has occurred at intervals for centuries past, as long as records have been kept, as long as man remembers, and undoubtedly will recur for centuries to come, although the authorities who are responsible for the well-being of the empire are gradually organizing to counteract forces of nature which they cannot control, by increasing the food supply and providing means for its distribution.  But there must be hunger and starvation in India so long as the population remains as dense as it is.  The reason is not because the earth refuses to support so many people.  There is yet a vast area of fertile land untilled, and the fields already cultivated would furnish food enough for a larger population when normal conditions prevail, although there’s but a bare half acre per capita.  There is always enough somewhere in India for everybody even in times of sorest distress, but it is not distributed equally, and those who are short have no money to buy and bring from those who have a surplus.  The export of grain and other products from India continues regularly in the lean as well as the fat years, but the country is so large, the distances so great, the facilities for transportation so inadequate, that one province may be exporting food to Europe because it has to spare, while another province may be receiving ships loaded with charity from America because its crops have failed and its people are hungry.

The health and happiness of three hundred million human souls in India and also of their cattle, their oxen, their sheep, their donkeys, their camels and their elephants are dependent upon certain natural phenomena over which neither rajah nor maharaja, nor viceroy, nor emperor, nor council of state has control, and before which even the great Mogul on his bejeweled throne stood powerless.  It is possible to ameliorate the consequences, but it is not possible to prevent them.

Whether the crops shall be fat or lean, whether the people and the cattle shall be fed or hungry, depends upon the “monsoons,” as they are called, alternating currents of wind, which bring rain in its season.  All animal and vegetable life is dependent upon them.  In the early summer the broad plains are heated by the sun to a temperature higher than that of the water of the great seas which surround them.  In parts of northern India, around Delhi and Agra, the temperature in May and June is higher than in any other part of the empire, and is exceeded in few other parts of the world.  This phenomenon remains unexplained.  The elevation is about 2,100 feet above the sea; the atmosphere is dry and the soil is sandy.  But for some reason the rays of the sun are intensely hot and are fatal to those who are exposed to them without sufficient protection.  But this extreme heat is the salvation of the country, and by its own action brings the relief without which all animal and vegetable life would perish.  It draws from the ocean a current of wind laden with