Mr. Percy continued, “I was once in a district where there was a famine; thousands of people were starving. At the best, we had not funds sufficient to give them half enough to eat of the coarsest food. There was nothing for them to gather, not even grass, for the earth was as hard and dry as a brick. The people died in the villages, on the roads, under the trees, not from any disease but from starvation. Every day we sent out men to bury the dead—skeletons—on which there was nothing for even the jackals to eat. It was a horrid time. I could scarcely eat my own food for thinking of the poor wretches dying in want of such food as was given to my dogs and horses. The few Europeans could not be everywhere in the district and watch everything, so we had to use our subordinates. In a very large village we put the Tahsildar in charge. He reported to us the number to be fed, and we supplied him with funds and gave him orders to purchase and distribute so much food each day. He reported every day that he had done so. I rode out one morning very early and found some food cooked, the fires all out, and the distribution ready to begin. I had the food weighed and found it was only half the allowance ordered, and that he had daily reported. I ordered the fires to be relighted and the proper amount of food to be cooked, and saw to the feeding of the people myself, twenty-two hundred of them, and then what they did get was only half of what they needed, a couple of chupatties and a little dhal, to last them for twenty-four hours; but it was all we could give them. This was for that day; but what if I had not been there, or what of the days when no European was present? We were as positive as we could be that this Tahsildar was making money out of the famine fund; but what could we do? He received the money, he bought the food, saw to the distribution and made out his own reports. He could have bought up any number of lying witnesses to prove that he was honest, and we had none to prove him otherwise. Shortly after the famine he made a grand wedding for one of his children that cost him over ten thousand rupees, and it was the common talk among the natives that he got this money from the famine relief fund.