Since writing one week ago, your correspondent has attempted to get a little more at the inwardness of the trouble in the camps here, but little success has attended his efforts, However, that a rebellion was planned to take place, beginning about the 13ch of the Chinese' moon, seems to be evident. The plan was to kill the General in command, get possession of the magazines and rifles, and then make themselves strong in the city. The foreign instructors in the forts were to be put under arrest, and sent in well guarded boats, without injury to their persons, to Shanghai, or some place where they would be out of the way. That all this was not carried out was owing to the accidental explosion of the main magazine, just across the river, north from the forts. The magazine was being rifled of its contents at the time of the explosion, and a very large proportion of the powder and cattridyes had been removed. Much of the powder was very old, and the tin cans in which it was stored had tasted. It is supposed that the explosion was caused by friction set up by these cans being opened with cleavers. But no one really knows how the plosion did occur, since no one in or immediately around the buildings escape, An exper' has estimated that the amount of powder consumed could nob have been less than fifteen thousand pounds. Four-inch shells were thrown three hundred and fifty yards. A shell, at the distance of three hundred yards from the magazine, cut a man in two about the middle. A hole ten feet deep by twenty feet in circumference was blown in the vround*on the site of the magazine, 80 that the mangled condition of those in or about the building can better be imagined than described. Rifle firing had begun among the opposing factions, and even the camp under the guns of the forts had taken violent possession of all the rifles and ammunition in their reach, and firing had commenced among them. But the explosion was so terrific in its character, and so destructive to life, nearly 300 orsons being killed, that the mutinous actions were completely and immediately awed. So that it is probable thet the explosion was, under the circumstances, a blessing in disguise.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.