Sickness of various descriptions, giddiness, retchings, fainting fits, convulsions, and in some cases, death itself, were induced by this wolfish and frightful gluttony on the part of the starving people.

Others, however, who possessed more sense, and maintained a greater restraint over their individual sufferings, might be seen in all directions, hurrying home, loaded with provisions of the most portable descriptions, under which they tottered and panted, and sometimes fell utterly prostrate from recent illness or the mere exhaustion of want.

Aged people, grey-haired old men, and old women bent with age, exhibited a wild and excited alacrity that was grievous to witness, while hurrying homewards--if they had a home, or if not, to the first friendly shelter they could get--a kind of dim exulting joy feebly blazing in their heavy eyes, and a wild sense of unexpected good fortune working in unnatural play upon the muscles of their wrinkled and miserable faces.

The ghastly impressions of famine, however, were not confined to those who composed the crowds.

Even the children were little living skeletons, wan and yellow, with a spirit of pain and suffering legible upon their fleshless but innocent features--while the very dogs, as was well observed, were not able to bark, unless they stood against a wall; for indeed, such of them as survived, were nothing but ribs and skin.