According to a memorial presented by the Viceroy at Canton, last May and June the mountain streams overflowed the country in the north-east of the province. In Chia-ying Chou and the adjacent district of Chen-ping the damage done was so great og to amount to a very serious calamity. The memorialist immediately ordered five thousand taels to be borrowed from the Ch'ao-chou Fu merchants, and he sent a further ten thousand taels from the proul treasury. Before this money could be distributed, he received a telegram saying that parts'of P'ing-yuan Hsien in the same neighbourhood had been suddenl; flooded, many persons being areaned: houses washed down and fields flooded, and that mich the same had happened in parts of Chia-ying. He thereupon sent another two thousand taels and ordered enquiries to be made and relief to be given. According to the fuller reports which have since reached him, the district of Chen-ping was overwhelmed by a water spout in addition to the freshets coming down from the mountains of Fukien and Kiangsi. A hundred thousand feet of embankments were broken down, some thousands of houses were washed away, and hundreds of lives were lost. Two hundred salt boats were sun! d seven tenths of the cultivated land was inundated, crops to the estimated amount of 82,000 piculs thus being destroyed. The majority of the inhabitants had fled from their homes, and the collection of the taxes had become impossible. The authorities were doing their best to tranquillise the people; but was necessary at once to restore the which would cost a very large sum, could not be found by the people theniselves as rich and poor were reduced to the same destitution. The memorialist learns that the embankments in Chen-ping are used to store up water for purposes of irrigation, and are different in character from the banks of the large rivers in other localities. When the flood came, everything was washed flat, and it will be necessary not only to reconstruct the embankments, but to remove the mud and sand which is scattered over the fields. He has taken from the treasury Tls. 10,000, and he proposes to execute the repairs as relief works. The strong will be expected at the same time to contribute their labour, ud the wealthy to give pecuniary subscriptions. The old and weak, the women and children, will have relief distributed to them separately. The damage done in ing is much less than in Chen-ping and in P'ing-yuan, though the suffering is severe, still the houses destroyed are only counted by hundreds and the lives lost by tens.
In Hui-chou Fu, it appears that crops in Kuei-shan Hsien have suffered but little, though the city wall has fallen in places, and 12,000 feet of embankment have been washed away in Po-lo Hsien, where a fifth of the crops is damaged. In Kuang-chou Fu, there is mischief done in Tung-kuan Helen, and in Ts'ung-hua Hsien; while parts of Hsi-nan have suffered from a whirlwind, many houses being blown down and eight lives lost. There have also been floods and embankments washed away in Kuang-ning Hsien, which belongs to Shao-ching Fu, and in Lu-feng Hsien of Hui-chow Fu. In all these places the local authorities have been ordered to issue relief as required. A list is added of several other places in Hui-chou, Kuang-chou and Ch'ao-chou, where there have also been inundations; but, as the water passed quickly away, the harm has not been serious in any of them.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.