order that they might be saved. It has thus happened that great difficulty has been experienced in irrigating the land for the rubbee crops, and much land which would otherwise have been cultivated has lain waste from this want of means of irrigation." Other nineteenth-century accounts also spoke of distress, chaos, and migration southwards: "Grain merchants closed their shops, the peasantry took to plunder; cattle starved and died; in the part of the Mathura district west of the Jumna, the village thatches were torn down to feed the starving beasts. There was a general move of the people in the direction of Mâlwa, that Cathay or land of plenty, where, in the imagination of the North Indian rustic, the fields always smile with golden grain and poverty is unknown." Auckland found the conditions in these districts to be so distressing that, in his words, "the largest expenditure" was required "in order to palliate the evil, and prevent the total depopulation of the country by starvation and emigration." Relief Although some relief was provided in the last few months of 1837, famine relief on a large scale did not begin until February 1838. In his report to the Governor-General of February 1838, Mr. Rose, the Deputy-Collector of Cawnpore observed that while the relief was still insufficient, it had nonetheless lessened the distress somewhat, and had, according to him, stemmed the tide of emigration to other regions. It had also served, in his view, as an exemplar in encouraging others to organize their own relief efforts. Rose wrote: "... the relief afforded, in its present state, is inadequate to the wants of the people, but it must not on that account be considered valueless. Thousands have by it been saved from death by starvation, and the flood of emigration has been checked. The aid afforded ... will ... evince to the people that the Government are anxious to relieve their present unparalleled suffering, and the example thus set forth has ... been an inducement to hundreds to bestir themselves, on behalf of the starving poor, who never before thought of lending their aid in relieving the distress." From the onset of the scarcity, the Government provided only "work-relief" for able bodied persons. "Charitable relief," or relief for the old and indigent, was left to private efforts. At first, local grain merchants were drafted in the relief effort: the laborers in the relief