e population of the empire. In
some of them sanitary regulations are observed, and statistics
are accurately reported. In others no attempt is made to keep
a registry of deaths, and there are no means of ascertaining
the mortality, particularly in times of excitement. In these
little principalities the peasants have, comparatively speaking,
no medical attendance; they are dependent upon ignorant fakirs
and sorcerers, and they die off like flies, without even leaving
a record of their disappearance. Therefore the only way of
ascertaining the mortality of those sections is to make deductions
from the returns of the census, which is taken with more or less
accuracy every ten years.

[Illustration: AN EKKA OR ROAD CART]

The census of 1901 tells a terrible tale of human suffering and
death during the previous decade, which was marked by two famines
and several epidemics of cholera, smallpox and other contagious
diseases. Taking the whole of India together, the returns show
that during the ten years from 1892 to 1901, inclusive, there
was an increase of less than 6,000,000 instead of the normal
increase of 19,000,000, which was to be expected, judging by
the records of the previous decades of the country. More than
10,000,000 people disappeared in the native states alone without
leaving a trace behind them.

The official report of the home secretary shows that Baroda State
lost 460,000, or 19.23 per cent of its population.

The Rajputana states lost 2,175,000, or 18.1 per cent of their
population.

The central states lost 1,817,000, or 17.5 per cent.

Bombay Province lost 1,168,000, or 14.5 per cent.

The central provinces lost 939,000, or 8.71 per cent.

These are the provinces that suffered most from the famine, and
therefore show the largest decrease in population.

The famine of 1900-01 affected an area of more than four hundred
thousand square miles and a population exceeding sixty millions,
of whom twenty-five millions belong in the provinces of British
India and thirty-five millions to the native states.

"Within this area," Lord Curzon says, "the famine conditions
for the greater part of a year were intense. Outside it they
extended with a gradually dwindling radius over wide districts
which suffered much from loss of crops and cattle, if not from
actual scarcity. In a greater or less degree in 1900-01 nearly
one-fourth of the entire population of the Indian continent came
within the range of relief op