Even if there should be very little food in any one home,
or if the wood supply should be neglected, the next door neighbor could
be relied upon for succor.
"Ninety-four years prior to the summer that now concerns us, a cold
spell had occurred after an interval of eighty-one years, which lasted a
hundred and ten hours, and during which one-third of the inhabitants of
Hili-li, between hunger and cold, lost their lives. Not more than one
hundred persons remembered the last preceding storm, and they must have
been very young children when it occurred; and even they felt no alarm
on the subject, as the storm preceding it had happened about sixteen
years earlier, and, though a light one, was sufficient to alarm both the
rulers and the masses, and resulted in a state of preparedness for the
next storm. But now, the middle-aged men knew of these cold spells only
as matters of history, to which they gave little practical attention;
and from the lips of their grandparents, who, as I have said, had never
personally known one of them to cause serious distress or loss of life.
"On the morning of February 17, 1829, there was not on the Island of
Hili-li a single residence which had the wood-supply contemplated by the
forgotten statute relating to that subject; there were few homes that
had in store food sufficient for more than forty-eight hours use; and,
though most families were in possession of some oil, their cook-stoves
were not constructed for heating, and were connected with flues in
outbuildings; and, further, there was not enough oil on the island to
have warmed the city at such a time for twenty-four hours.
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