The Hu Pao says that His Holiness, the Pope, has conferred un order upon Mr. Detring for his able and impartial services in connection with the transfer of the Peking Cathedral site, The Chinese Catholic Register says that a very ruinous hail storm is reported in the Shan Tung Province, Ch'ii-we District.
The Hu Pao says that over a thousand telegraph poles belonging to the Yunnan (Mung-tsz District) and Kweichow line have been pulled down by the people, who say the telegraph isa diabolical European artifice and harms the geomantic influences. Troops to the number of 2,000 have been ordered to the spot.
Last week, according to the Shen Puo, no less than 88 persons were summarily executed in the Kiang-yin (71) and Ch'angshuh (17) Districts near Shanghai for belonging to secret societies. The rebels wore their hair without a queue and were all disguised as Tavist. priests. Evidence upon them was found of a project to seize Ch'ang-shuh city.
Serious loods aroreported from Nganking, and according to the native papers a general scarcity of tice is likely tobe the result ut the heavy rains this year, which have done immense damage all over the country, The price of rice in Shanghai has already gone up to $3.40 the picul.
The Shen Puo says that" couple of months ago treasonable correspondence with the Ko-lao Society was discovered by one of the military commandants in the Kiang-Hwai region, in his own camp. The signal was to be the alarm of a fire in the town or village on the 5th day of the 5th moon (25th June). The comniandant made his dispositions, and in due course a fire was reported, and permission asked to proceed to extinguish it. The officer and the whole squad concerned, eleven men in all, were at once decapitated, whilst free pardon was offered to those of the other soldiers concerned who would deliver up compromising articles. The result was that 40 small fags were at once surrendered and burnt.
Another correspondent says that sus ous gangs of Taoist priests from Hupeh and Anhwet have been noticed prowling about Souchow, disposing of peacocks' feathers and other mysterious objects, such as coppercadh swords, dragons. be; but the headmen and local authorities hid already got rid of them. It is considered certain that these men were conspirators of the same band of which eighty have just been executed in Kiang-yin and Ch'ang-shuh, The Shen Puo gives a most harrowing account of the floods at Ch'u-chou Fu, uj the Wenchow River. Over a thousand human beings have been swept away, and the destruction of growing crops is immense. There were ninety corpses seen at a plice called P'ing-yen, in the Ts'ing-tien District above Weénchow, and at spot called Shaoki T'u a rice cask or hamper was picked up ith w.woman and child and 8100 in ie, idantly the belongings of some devoted husband who had thus consigned his most cherished objects to the waters. The lower part of the island on which' the British Consulate stands has been swept by the furious waters, and vast quantities of debris are being cast up in every direction, The authorities of Ch'n-chow City, which is several feet under water, have been obliged to take to boats.
The Shen Pao attributes the recent ebullitions of the secret society men to dismissed braves whose lives have become unused to quiet ud orderly methods. A number of Taoist priests were recently selling cash swords in Shanghai, but within the past two days they have disappeared.
A case is mentioned by the Chinkiang correspondent which throws light upon the Chinese popular view of parental rights. A labourer's wife there died shortly after childbirth; and, though the neighbours offered to rear up the infant for the forlorn father, the latter firmly resolved to bury him alive in the same coflin with his dead ibours do not appear to h ought themselves legally justified in interfering, but the correspondent goes so
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.