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They arrived uninjured at the Yellow River, where, however, they found a famine-stricken crowd, armed with clubs, eager to kill them. The starving natives had been told, and believed, that the scarcity of food was due to the foreigners' presence in China, and their hostile attitude can scarcely be wondered at.
"What it has done for me?" and he went slowly on, thinking half aloud, as if the idea were occurring for the first time. "It touched me one soft summer day, before the earth became mildewed and famine-stricken. I was a proud, wilful Axtell boy; all the family traits were written with a white-hot pen on me.
We were thousands of miles away from the famine-stricken regions of eastern China, and through much of the country where I journeyed I saw almost no beggars or hungry-looking folk. In the afternoon we stopped as before at short intervals at some roadside tea-house, for the coolies generally expect to rest every hour. Our day's stage usually ended in a good-sized town.
But to appreciate properly the service he renders us we must remember that the dishes to be obtained from grass are very, very small, and that it would be a great fatigue to the stomach if it could only get at such tiny scraps at a time; as, alas! has sometimes happened to the famine-stricken poor, who have tried in vain to support life from the grass in the field.
He stood a good deal of misplaced kindness, and even wore clothes without complaint; but he could not bear having his hair cut, and so ran away to the bush. He belonged to the wandering tribe that daily visited the camp a tribe of wretched famine-stricken "blacks," whose natural hideousness and filthy appearance were intensified by the dirty rags with which they made shift to cover their bodies.
With that power of graphic description which was the gift of his vivid imagination and deep sense of sympathy with the needs of others, he brought the whole scene before the eyes of his listeners the crowded marketplace, the famine-stricken people in their extremity and despair, the calm heroism of the men who willingly offered their lives to save those of their townspeople, and the wailing multitude watching the start of the devoted six going forth to a shameful and ignominious death on their behalf.
Like a famine-stricken creature, the parched earth could not drink; its bone-dry dust set like cement beneath the too generous flood and refused to take it in and still the rain came down in sluicing torrents that never stayed or slackened. The cracked dirt of the ramada roof dissolved and fell away, and the stick frame leaked like a sieve.
I think we are justified in naming £300,000 for 1847, instead of £200,000, Mr. Harvey's estimate, these two sums make £760,180, which being added to the acknowledged amount of public subscriptions, we have a total of £1,867,646, 13s. as the amount voluntarily and charitably contributed to our Famine-stricken people.
Especially hard in that bleak, snow-bound, famine-stricken winter-time, when the only light and warmth there could be found abode beside the village hearths and in the kindly greetings of neighbours.
Turning to the wall where hung a noble picture, a lovely landscape, whose rich coloring, warm sunlight, and rural peace formed a sharp, strange contrast with the meagre, famine-stricken apartment, he was about to take it down from its fastening when his hand was arrested by a word "Father!"
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