The Committee for the relief of the suf-federa by the recent unrural calamities in Shantung, which has its headquarters at the Shanghai Wen pav an. office for the transmission of letters for officials, has received the following telegram from the energetic Mr. Sié(gft) of the Tai-nan Committee (gig if fy), Shantung, dated 5th Angus! slalas district where relief has been in RR)
"The villages in the Hui-min
have been inundated, owing to heavy rains, 18 feet deep in parts; dry weather will improve matters, but the mountain torrents are now worse than before. In P'u-tai district (if) much rain, on the Sth July the various rivers overflowed and united their waters. At San-ch'a K'ow (=X O) Three-forks") Ma-wan (553%) Pah-chwang (/\HE), Nan-kia Chwang (ERE), Wali Chwang (Hi BE), and Si-chwang (FYFE) west of the cit
recently submerged. Half or more of there are foods, seventy of more villages people hare fled. Most important now to get families to remove from places in danger, when we succeed in this will write to you fully. Iam in charge of this work in T'si-tung District Shortly before this last calamity, Mr. Sie was working energetically to induce the people to more in from their dangerous holdings outside of the t'" ti (KBR), large Government levees or embankments, and inside of the min nien (§R48), or people's dykes, which they had built' themselves. The rich alluvial soil left by recent fi had tempted them out to those rious places, to which at first they only went to work for the day, returning at night to their homes and families behind the comparatively powerful protection of the ti, With the usual want of forethought of the poor, they had finally built their wuts on, and removed their wives and families' out to, the fields where they worked at the peril of their lives, to save themselves the trouble of a daily tramp of afew liin and out to the scene of their labours. Mr. Sie calculated that at the cost. of 'Tls. 300,000, estimating each family at four persons, and the cost of removing of each family at Tls. 20, this whole number of people, amounting to about 50,000 or 60,000, could' be brought in to a place of safety behind the ti. Tsting-cheng (FAHR), Chang-kin (EBB), Ts'i-tung (PPI), Pin Chow (YUH), Pou-t'ai (GER), and Li-tsin (FYB) were all considered as dangerous districts, a belief of the truth of which the recent disaster has afforded a melancholy confirmation. A telegram from Mr. Sié's colleague Mr. Yen (MR), received only a few weeks before ost recent inundation, announced that about a thousand families had alread; been pre: be vailed upon by the advice of himself and Sig, and were ready to move in behind the i if assisted with money. The Taotai Sheng st Chefoo reported that the water was rising rapidly.
Over Tls. 1,000,000 have already been given in charity with no result but to keep the people alive in a place of danger from week to week, and the expenditure of Tls. 300,000 which Sie and his colleagues were doing their best to collect, would have produced permanent results, and probably obviated the necessity for further calls for charity.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.