the pleasure of presenting the sweet innocent to him on

his happy return.

She was already become uneasy at his not arriving, or her not having again heard from him, when the received the following letter:

DEAR BESS,

Gravesend, 1st of Feb,

When I arrived in the river, and was a going aboard a ship, to see if so be that I could get a passage to Leith, there was a spar fell off the deck, and struck me on the shoulder, and knocked me down, and the end crushed my right hand on the boat's gunnell. Seeing that it was so that I was too much hurt to go to sea, I came back here and have since been a little feverish. As I cannot write with my hand, this is not wrote by myself. I would not have you be uneasy my dear, because I hopes to be soon well and able to come to you. Till then I am your loving husband WILLIAM SMITH;

This, again, threw Betsy into sadnefs and distrefs; her anxiety magnified every thing in the letter; fhe imagined William to be dangerously ill; and, in short, immediately formed the design of going to him herself. All her friends could not dissuade her from it; it was in vain for them to point out to her how probable it was that he would be perfectly recovered before she got there; and how unnecefsary is was for her to expose herself to the danger and fatigue of such a voyage, at that season. She would not be prevented, nor would fhe leave her child behind, as fhe could not be brought to part with it, lest the change of milk fhould hurt it, or it should not be taken proper care of in her absence. And as the old man had died, opprefsed with anxiety, some time after his son William had disappeared, fhe had no object at home sufficient to detain her from her husband. She applied to captain Jenkins who agreed to give her a passage free in his fhip from VOL. Xiv,

March 13. Leith, and fhe arrived safe at Gravesend, with her little child, where he found her husband almost quite well, and waiting an opportunity of coming to Scotland. It is impossible to delineate her joy, and his surprise at meeting each other. The satisfaction of so happy a circumstance, after so many hardships, was unequalled, and their mutual love glowed with renovated warmth. To be continued.

NOTICES OF A FAMINE IN INDIA, WITH REMARKS SUGGESTED
BY THAT EVENT.

FROM the correspondence of Dr Anderson of Madras, from time to time inserted in the Bee, it appears that one of the great objects of those truly patriotic exertions he has made for the improvement of India, is to guard against those famines which have hitherto been so frequent in populous tropical regions. We who live in a climate that does not admit of such abundant vegetation in favourable seasons, have no idea of the immense difference between the quantity of human food produced there in one season, in proportion to the deficiency of another, and the consequent mischiefs it occasions. But Dr Anderson having lived longer there than most Europeans, has so often had occasion to observe the fatal effects of these vicissitudes, that it has excited in his mind an ardent desire of guarding against the effects of it in future, by the wise and salutary measures he has recommended. That our readers may form some judgement of the effects of this miserable scourge of mankind, I here subjoin an extract of a letter, of date the 5th of October 1792, describing the misery experienced by the inhabitants of a considerable part of India at present, which I received from a correspondent on the spot, by the Ganges. Since the commencement of this work, I have scarcely received

i

á dispatch from India in which something of the same sort has not been detailed.

"I do not recollect whether I mentioned before, that a most dreadful famine has raged for many months in our northern circars, from the failure of the usual falls of rain. For these nine or ten months past, the misery has been dreadful; the country in many places quite depopulated. Houses have been broken open where the whole family have been found dead in other places, nineteen families out of twenty have been destroyed; and throughout thesé extensive circars, at the most moderate calculation, I understand more than one half have perished. An unfortunate dread of famine in Bengal, has caused the desolation to be so widely extended, and the supplies that have been sent have arrived so lately, that little good can yet be done; and the high price that imported grain. always bears, does not allow the lower clafses of inhabitants in a country, where much silver does not circulate among them, ever to benefit much by it; the little mo ney they could have had, must have been expended long ago, and it has been impossible to earn any thing for many months, from the great debility that a scanty, poor, and frequently unwholesome food has produced among the few remaining; yet I do not learn that any pecuniary aid has been afforded at present, to preserve even them; although it must be every where allowed, that no misfortune or lofs can happen to any country equal to the lofs of inhabitants. Such is the unfortunate situation of most Eastern countries, where no provision is made against a failure of rain, and where the inhabitants are satisfied with a daily subsistence."

To guard against the frequency of disasters of this sort, Dr Anderson has proposed to introduce the culture of silk, and cochineal, and indigo, into these regions; thus to furnish employment to the people, and to give them the means of purchasing rice from other countries, when an

accidental scarcity in one province, hall happen to prevail; and along with that, he is now anxiously employed in recommending extensive plantations of the bread fruit trees, which may yield an abundant resource in those seasons when the crop of rice fails. The nopal plants, too, by affording a nourishing vegetable food, may contribute much, he thinks, in promoting this desirable end: but before his beneficent views can be fully effected, other measures must co-operate, which it is to be feared the state of India at present, scarcely admits of being vigorously adopted.

It is a prodigious misfortune to the people in India, that the religious tenets of many of their sects circumscribe the kinds of food they are permitted to eat within such narrow bounds. Not only are they debarred from tasting of animal food, but even many kinds of vegetable substances are held to be impure. Hence it happens, that the bulk of the people are reduced to live almost entirely upon rice. Now, as rice cannot be reared to a full crop, unlefs where the plants grow among water, for the greatest part of the time they are in the ground, it follows that when the rains are not so abundant as to supply the quantity of water necefsary for that purpose, they have no crop of it; and on these occasions they have scarce any thing else, to which they can have re

course.

What adds to this misfortune, is, that on these occa sions also, the only other substitute for rice the poor people have it in their power to adopt, must be also proportionally diminished in quantity; vix the root of the nymphea aquatica, or water lily, which in rainy seasons affords them a plentiful food at a small expence. This is an aquatic plant, which requires much more water to bring it to perfection than rice does. The rice requires only to be kept in earth soaked with water, till it be in the state of pap. The nymphea grows best when covered

with water to a considerable depth. To obtain a gradual supply of water for the rice fields, it becomes necessary to form, in the uneven parts of the country, very extensive ponds, which they call tanks, having sluices at the under part, by which the water can be let off in regulated quantities, to supply the rice fields in the proper season. These tanks are often formed by raising a mound acrofs the lower opening of an extensive valley, and thus to form a large and capacious bason, or artificial lake, sometimes of many miles extent. During the rainy season the sluices are shut, and the water accumulated to a greater or smaller height, in proportion to the abundance or deficiency of the rains. Thus it happens that a great proportion of the soil in these districts is converted into tanks, or temporary lakes, on which no rice can be reared. The natives, however, having discovered that the nymphea aquatica grows as well under water, as the rice does above ground, and affords large roots, which yield a nourishing food, they plant the bottom of the tanks with these, which, when the flooding has been abundant, yield also an abundant crop; but when it is deficient, the produce of this article also fails in proportion. Thus are they deprived at the same time of this crop, and of the crop of rice, the only two kinds of food that are almost ever eaten by the natives.

Dr Anderson thinks that as the nopal thrives in the driest soil, and prospers luxuriantly in the warmest weather, if that plant were universally cultivated for the rearing of cochineal, in ordinary seasons, it might be applied as a temporary resource for augmenting the quantity of human food, when the two usual crops fail. The same reasoning applies to the bread fruit tree, which, by rooting deeper in the ground than the ordinary tribe of annual plants, can find nourishment in firmer soils, and during a longer course of dry weather than they could bear, Could these trees, therefore, be established in abundance in every district of the country, they would come to afford