Charles Chapin Tracy, missionary, philanthropist, educator, first ...

CHARLES CHAPIN TRACY 17
not come. Irrigation and the dry farming principles
that are to turn this country into a paradise have not
even yet arrived. The crops dried up and the people
were hungry. The flocks and herds were starving
too, as they depended on straw for their winter fodder
through two months of snow. People were dying all
about, all were suffering, and hundreds of haggard and
tottering refugees reached Marsovan from the worse
stricken regions further east, their skins blackened with
famine and their bodies only half covered with foul
rags. Children were seen with the bones almost
protruding through their skin. " Famine bread
was sometimes made of barley bran, or chaff
and meal, or with grape seeds or grass among the
ingredients.
Aid was sent from America and other Christian
lands, and Marsovan missionaries undertook their first
work for relief. The soup kitchens and bread rations
which they established saved many lives. Later the
people were helped to get seed wheat and animals, and
to take a new start in life. The Americans suffered
in spirit as well as in body with the miserable people
about them. Sometimes food could hardly be bought
in the market or brought even secretly to the homes.
Famine fever followed the famine, and Mrs. Tracy and
her two children were among those who suffered with
it. Mr. Tracy himself broke down under the strain,
and the family was obliged in broken health to return
to America. They had been away from home eight
long years.