boiling camps. In these camps they can earn fair wages, and meanwhile their families subsist upon loans, and dig in the jungle for roots and other edibles to eke out their scanty supply of grain.

Some small villages are almost abandoned of able-bodied males. The usual watch kept at night on the village gates has had to be abandoned. One gate is closed up completely, and at sunset the other is firmly barricaded with logs and thorn-bushes. As yet there has been but little sale of cattle, not because the owners are too well off to care to sell, but because there is no one to buy. Agricultural work is at a standstill, and the Burmans do not kill cattle for food.

The policy of Government in famine times is laid down in the Famine Code. When it has become clear that a failure of crops has become severe and that relief is required, the distressed area is declared as one within which the Famine Code applies. Works are arranged for, and gratuitous relief is organised.

The work that has been opened here as a famine work is an extension to Myingyan of the branch of the Burma State Railway which now ends at Meiktila. This section is fifty-six miles in length, and was surveyed some years ago, so that all was ready for work to commence. Moreover, as it runs through the very centre of the distressed area, it was peculiarly suitable as a famine work. In the second and third weeks of November four camps under the charge of engineers were opened on this line. Labourers from distant places were collected and drafted into the work; those near by were left to find their own way to it, notices having been freely distributed. The full ration for an able-bodied relief-worker, sufficient

And the wage is the sum which at market rates will buy this ration, with an addition for each man of one halfpenny per day, and for each woman of one farthing and two-thirds. The total money wage at the rates at present ruling is, for a man 2td., and for a woman a trifle over 24d., taking the rupee ru as worth 1s. 3td. To children able to work about half these rates are given, and for infants in arms the mothers receive two-thirds of a farthing per day.

It will be seen that these are not exorbitant rates; what is enough to keep a man in good health is much less than we should call a comfortable quantity of food. And for all that a man requires beyond bare food, for clothing and cooking-pots, and the thousand and one wants of daily life, there is one halfpenny a-day.

The usual labour rates in the neighbourhood are 3d. a-day with food and cheroots, but it is not intended that the rates in a famine camp should approximate to normal rates. It is not the desire of Government to attract to its work those who could be more profitably employed in the usual industries of the district. Whoever cannot secure private employment of any kind to give him a subsistence will find in the famine works a certain employment, where, for a not too heavy day's labour, enough to buy food can be earned; and he can thus tide through till better times.

Directly the works were opened thousands of people flocked to them. Notwithstanding the notices which were freely issued stating the rates of pay, the people hoped and expected that they would be paid at the ordinary tariff which coolies have received for working on the roads and elsewhere. When they found how small was the actual wage that would be earned, there was bitter disappointment. In one camp they even tried to organise a strike, thinking, poor souls, that by so doing they could force the hand of Government. And even now, after much explanation and much trouble, the impression generally is that Government is taking advantage of their distress to get its work done cheap. They do not understand that even at these low rates it costs Government more to work by the unskilled labour of women, of children, and of men, some of whom do not know how to dig, than to pay high rates for skilled labour. They will not believe that Government is not doing a good stroke of business out of the famine.

The numbers on the famine camps rose very rapidly to about 25,000, and have remained fairly stationary at that number. But before long, when the little jowar that was reaped is eaten up, and the jungle fruits and roots are exhausted, there will be a large increase to the number, no doubt. How large it will be no one can tell-it depends upon the earliness of the showers, and other matters that no one can foresee. The earthwork of this section is estimated to be completed in May. What will be done afterwards is not yet

decided.

Besides the opening of these famine works, which have thus rescued 25,000 people from starvation, and many of them, it may be,

from crime, to which misery so soon leads, there is the distribution of gratuitous relief provided for those who have no relatives to work for them. This relief is paid weekly to the headmen of their villages, and is calculated at a lower scale than that for workers at the camps. At present it is for a man låd., and for a woman 1d. Children receive ld. if big, and d. if small. It is enough to buy a bare subsistence, and that is all. There are now on gratuitous relief about 5000 people, but this includes a great number of small children, who are with their mothers on the works, but unable to work.

In a famine such as this it is always the women who suffer first, -widows with large families and divorced women, and all the crew of superfluous femininity which exists even here in Burma. A strong man can always keep himself going. It is the women and the children who come to grief. And yet no one can say that the men are unkind. Consider how a woman with three or four small children joining a gang on the work handicaps that gang. She draws herself 24d. a-day, and for the three children, say, d. a total of 2d. She and the children cannot live on that, and the rest of the gang must contribute to their support. And they must also do extra work because of it. She cannot do her full task. There are the little ones to be looked after. The baby must be suckled, the eye of the mother must be occasionally on the other two lest they fall into a cutting and get killed. She is herself weak, and cannot work hard. She is burden to the gang that allows her to enter their numbers. And yet there is never any trouble about it. There are very many

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such women on the work; they are never outcasts from any gang. The burden of their assistance is borne freely and generously by all. And indeed the generosity of these people out of their poverty is something to marvel at.

We came one day upon an old woman sitting by one of the huts. The people were all at work, and she was alone, a pathetic sight, stretching her thin chilled hands to the morning sun. And we asked her who she was, and whether she had been entered in the lists for relief. The old creature shook her head. She had been here three days, she told us in her quavering tones. She had no relations, no children, no one, all were dead long ago. She received no pay from Government, not she. But people were very kind. They gave her a little food here and there out of their pots. She had enough to live on, and all was well.

It is a lesson in courage, in charity, in nobility of soul, that comes to one's very heart, to watch these people. We know what straits they are in. Their crops gone, broken up, starvation kept off from day to day by hard work alone. They are deprived of even their little luxury of a smoke. All Burmans smoke their great white cheroots, which are so very cheap and so very harmless. It is the only stimulant they have, for they neither drink nor do they take opium. Men smoke, and women; boys smoke, and girls, and babies.

And in all these big camps, after they come back from work, and the evening meal is eaten, and the people are sitting round chatting, singing, and laughing, you will never see the gleam of the cheroot. They are living on the margin of existence.

And yet they are never sulky, never cast down, never desponding. They are, as always, very cheerful, very independent, very long-suffering. Crime amongst them is almost unknown. the large camp of 7000 people, which I know best, there has not been a quarrel or a fight since the camp commenced.

On

They are a wonderful nation. In the villages the private charity is very great. It must be remembered that in small communities half the village are usually kin to each other. A man will marry a girl of his own village, who brings him a further circle of relations in addition to his own. And relationship is a very sacred tie to the Burmese-far closer than we have any idea of amongst ourselves. Any man who is slightly better off than others has always a large circle of relations to whom his charity can flow without going afield for it. So it is that although the amount of private charity that is given is very great - compared to the means of the people, enormous - yet there is no show for it. There are no subscription-lists, no collection-boxes, no public distribution of alms. If a man of means can in these hard times manage to keep his relations from ruin and starvation, that is as much as he can do. And on the better off among the community, those who have managed even in the hard year to reap enough or earn enough to have a superfluity, the monks and the monasteries are dependent. In every small village there will be a monastery, however poor, and one monk at least. In large villages there are many. Besides ministering to the religious needs of the people, these monks are the schoolmasters. Every monastery is a school where all the little boys are taught gratuitously. And these monasteries have no endowments. The monks and novices are all of them dependent on the daily charity of the villagers. So far only in one or two cases of villages reduced to veriest destitution have I heard of a monk having been obliged to go elsewhere because the people could not support him. Even in these cases it has been but a superfluous monk, not the principal one of the monastery. As long as there is a man left in the village with means beyond his daily wants, the monks will be fed and the schools kept up. Even upon the famine camps a little food will be spared to give the monks as they come round in their morning procession.

Charity, unostentatious, heartfelt charity, is one of the greatest of virtues in Buddhism is one of the many beautiful sides of the Burmese character.

I have never heard of any one dying of starvation in Burma.

Even in the famine no such report has ever been sent in no such report will ever be sent in, I think, as long as there is any one who has a meal to spare. Even in the famine of 1856-57, when there was no Government relief, I believe very few people died actually of famine.

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As to the future, who can say! Neither am I brother to the rain that I should be able to say what will happen. If the early rains are timely and plentiful, the stress will be over in September or October; if the late rains good and average crops are reaped, the country will begin to settle down again to its normal condition early in 1898. If there should be another failure, then it must be faced when it comes. We know so little about the causes of the seasons that there is no use speculating upon a remote future. H. FIELDING,

TOUNGTHA, 18. 1. '97.

THIS chief of indoor games, which requires forethought scarcely less than chess, with dexterity of manipulation and control of nerve infinitely greater, has lately attracted much attention; indeed it has been said that interest in the recent match between Roberts and Peall is second only to that felt in the reopening of the Eastern Questionand the attitude of Greece. Realising this, we propose to gossip in an irresponsible way about the game and its votaries, whose ways shall be considered as they strike the student of human nature in the billiard-room.

The origin of the game is decently shrouded in the mists of antiquity, and so far all attempts at revelation based on labour in libraries have proved to be vain and profitless. The simple and perhaps not less satisfactory solution is to assume that research will fail for the sufficient reason that record is wanting, and that modern billiards has developed and is developing from some game with balls played first on the ground, in the open or in yards, and afterwards promoted to a table indoors. Its history is checkered, and cannot be said to have a clean defaulter sheet: in early life the game seems to have flourished in the highest society, for kings and courtiers played, but later on it penetrated to a lower stratum, got into bad company, and acquired an evil reputation. In fact, as recently as the first half of this century it was respectable in private rooms only, the public room being often "the last refuge of a scoundrel" too idle for honest work, but ready to prey

on the unwary. Whether many such sharpers are still to be found is doubtful; not because human nature is better, for there are plenty of people as ready as ever to gain what others may lose and not too particular as to the means employed, but because the pigeon has evolved much sagacity in the matter of self-preservation. Instead of being gently taken in by the traditional rook who lets him win two half-crown games and proposes to play for a pound, our developed dove, after touching the silver, is apt to remember a pressing engagement elsewhere. Nevertheless the sharper's business is not wholly gone, nor will it cease so long as the supply of fools lasts, and that is likely to be for some time to come. It is carried on chiefly in public rooms and in those of hotels whenever a victim sufficiently conceited can be found, but the process of plucking is usually on a small scale, accompanied by smoking and drinking. When opportunities arise for a greater coup, the scene is transferred to a private room, as better befitting the graver occasion.

In clubs, too, the billiard-rooms in which occupy a position, so to speak, between those in a private house and public rooms, certain people no doubt add to their small incomes by their skill. They generally prefer pool or pyramids to billiards, play decidedly better than the average of their company, and are ludicrously quick to discern the advent of a player better than themselves, when they either stop altogether, preferring the cheaper