Issued for the suppression of corrupt doctrine and the maintenance of public welfare.
As we venture to view it, these rebel-hous barbarians, in times gone by and down to the present, have been the authors of unnumbered calamities to the injury of the Middle Kingdom. The case cannot be fully stated.
In the first decade of the 5th month of the current year there was developed a plot to injure this Kiet-Yue, District in the Sun-Tek and Sua-Chui have been injured. jurisdiction of Canton, in the same way
In these two districts men and women, old and young, toa number exceeding twice ten thousand, have been destroyed by the barbarian poison. It is dire beyond the power of expression.
The origin of the matter we understand to be thus, It was predicted that in this year Heaven would send a pestilence from which deliverance would be obtained only by the use of a single medicine, called Genii Powder or ily Ruot Powder. Money was lavished daily, employing Buddhist nuns and old women to visit the district cities and the villages—no place escaping them—taking with them the Genii Powder and exhorting people to partake of it, assuring them thet those who complied would be preserved in wellbeing. Large numbers of ignorant persons were deluded. In some twenty days after taking the powder the bowels would. swell and death would ensue. When the victim was about to die, the rebellions barbarian had a trick of telling him if he would escape from this disease he must enter the Roman Catholic Communion. Indeed, a hundred in number would not comprise: all the tricks for enticing people to enter, their sect.
Now a letter has from Canton to this district of Kiet-Yue, and of those who hear it there is not a man but loses courage and has his heart pervaded by fear. Would that before this calamity comes people would take precaution against it, and that when it does come our fellow-townsman would be fully on their guard. When strange faces are met with on the of. persons selling this powder, or a ki little cakes, then beware of buying. suggestion occurs farther. Let those who have remnants of food and drink to be laced away after meals, daily be careful to jock well after them, and buy not things at random, at the peril possibly of life itself. 7 These brief words are for the information of the public, to the end that corrupt doctrine may be extinguished for ever, and the good may be enabled to live in peace. Those who can give this perusal, and can make its contents known to others by the road side, will gain an unending blessing, and those who can write off a copy and send it to some distant place will win for themselves a long lease of life.
Done by the entire city of Kiet-foo.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.