not deliver to them the goods, the price of which had been stolen by the
"khatafin."

One could fill a book with the thousands of strange episodes which
occurred during this awful famine. Children, deserted by their
mothers--poor, wretched, starving little things--would beg in the most
pitiful, heart-breaking way for alms. Beggars would follow one about
till late at night, and would stand about one's house; they would beg
for hours even for a grain of food. A poor naked little boy one day
broke into our house, crying, "Gian Gowi!" ("I'm very hungry!") The
tone in which it was said, the wistful, sunken eyes, and the wretched
condition of the boy, could not but excite our pity, though hundreds of
beggars had been turned away before he came; we fed him, and he survived
the terrible year of famine, but he had forgotten his name, so we always
called him "Gian Gowi." Often did I see poor little skeletons of infants
trying to get nourishment from their dead mother's breasts.

The following instance will give the reader some insight into the
horrors of this famine. One day a poor woman came to me with three
starving children; she carried one in each arm, while the eldest clung
to her skirt, the whole four looked like wandering skeletons. With a
voice of agonised supplication, which could come from a mother only, she
earnestly begged me to take the boy and feed him, and that if he
survived he could remain for ever my slave. Here was a poor mother who
preferred to see her child a slave than to look on whilst he died of
starvation before her eyes. This touched me to the very heart, but I
could not accept the offer, for I had scarcely enough food for myself,
so I dismissed her with a handful of dhurra.

The next day the mother came with one child less, and the third day she
came with one child only; and at last she came alone, saying that she
was now going to follow her three loved children. After that I never saw
her again. If grief did not kill her, hunger must certainly have claimed
her as a victim.

One day a girl presented herself before the judge of the market court,
and reported that her mother had roasted her little brother and eaten
him, and that now she had run away, as she was afraid she might suffer
the same fate. The Kadi at once sent some soldiers with the girl to
seize the unnatural mother; they found a poor half-starved woman with an
ear and a piece of a leg. She was taken before the Kadi, and took a
solemn oath