The famine in Orissa was due to flood—an unforeseen calamity—and though the area was small in comparison, the horror of the starvation was much worse than anything in the United Provinces. The effect of drought can be foreseen, and it is one of the Government’s recognized functions to keep people alive in famine. Preparations for relief had begun in October, and at the head of the administration stood Sir John Hewett, the Lieutenant-Governor, in whom all Indians felt a peculiar confidence. But apart from his special influence, it is in famine time, as I have noticed before, that the zeal and sympathy of our officials are seen at their best. Men who in ordinary seasons would treat all Indians alike with habitual contumely, are perfectly willing to die for them in their distress, and once I travelled in a cabin with a high legal official in Allahabad, not connected in any way with relief, whose voyage out was made more and more miserable, because at every port came the news of continued drought in the province. Such sympathy from above is a memory of our old land-owning traditions, a relic of noblesse and its obligations, and, as long as our superiority is as undisputed as a captain’s or a curate’s, we are particularly successful in exercising this devoted patronage. [Illustration: GOING TO WORK.] [Illustration: RELIEF SHELTERS.] As no rain fell, “test works” were established in December. On test works heavy tasks like road-making are set, and no payment is given unless the work is done. Nothing but real poverty and hunger will drive people to work of this kind, and so, when two thousand men were found to be labouring at each of the test works, it was assumed that hunger was general, and “a state of famine” was officially proclaimed. A state of famine implies relief works on which the Government pays a fixed rate of wages to all workers, and assistance of some kind is given to every one—women, children, babies, and the old, as well as the able-bodied workers. The rate is decided by the Famine Commissioner according to his estimate of the price of grain. In this case he had calculated the price of grain for the time being at 18 lb. (9 seers) to the rupee (1_s._ 4_d._). By the “Wages Table for Public Works,” which is as easy to work with and as indisputable as a table of logarithms, this price gave the rate of wages at 2_d._ a day for diggers, whether men or women (but hardly any women consent to dig), 1½_d._ a day for carriers of earth (chiefly women), 1_d._ for children, and ½_d._ a day for babies.[55]