I have already written you a note, but add another line, The Yaimen people here continue to speak of the Mahomedan rebels carrying everything before them. Kansuh affairs are giving the Peking authorities much anxiety. The Mahomedan people in Tientsin are very much enraged because the authorities beheaded one of their ereed for merely fighting in the streets, a fortnight back On the headless body being buried about 600 Mahomedans followed in; and_the Mahomedans here have petitioned the Emperor regarding the illegallify of the act of the officials in beheading their ex-religionist. [hear that several of the authorities. are willing to give the mother of the man money to end the case, but she has refused to receive it. I suspect this affair will cause the local, as also the Peking authorities, no small amount of trouble and care. We hear that Chunghow left Marseilles on the 10th. December, for Shanghai, so he will reach your port' soon after this does.
2nd January 1872,"
The Customs Courier leaves at 10 a... to-day. The people are dying in great numbers daily. A brother of one of my servants, yesterday forenoon, saw two people breaking open a Ghild's coffin on the plan. This could hardly be for the few clothes on it. He sny they were going to eat the body. The authorities say, when speaking of the starving people, "there are too many people;" meaning too many to be fed by them, and that it is impossible to avoid their dying of hunger.
Some thieves broke into one of the foreign houses three nights back, and when the foreigner was awakened by their noise, he saw two men in his room.,.He rose and succeeded in catching hold of one fellow, but after a struggle of some minutes, he escaped. During the entry of the thieves and the struggle, the watchman was asleep in his room. The foreigner being in his sleeping dress and without shoes, was at a disadvantage. He did not think of using his revolver nor his shillalah, so the Cath punity. The night before last, some thieves made a hole into a house belonging to a Chinese clerk of a foreigner here, and carried off a lot of clothing.
The river remains quite open to Takao, and junks are to be seen going up and down from time to time. The water still keeps high in the n 9th Jan. 1872.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.