| Chapter VIII, p364: "There was a famine over the fishery coast for ten months at a stretch. This caused a dreadful death rate. To save their lives, a good number of the distressed, sold them almost for nothing. Others sold their little children. Some of the most distressed even went to the extent of feeding on human flesh. Men died of starvation and remained unburied in public squares and in market places. In Tuticorin alone around 1500 were said to have been died of starvation." [Footnote: Fr.Leon Bessie.S.J.,La Mission Du Madura Vol III , Op.cit, p.521. (ref. is to English translation "The Madurai Mission – Historical Account of its Pangus" (trans. L. Moumas, 1918); French original is: Léon Besse, "La mission du Maduré: historique de ses Pangous" (1914) )] |
