The Governor of Honan states that careful enquiries have shown the existence of great suffering among the inhabitants of several districts in Weihui Fu, where the country was flooded by the Wei River. Not only is money required for the relief of these poor people, but it is urgentl necessary that the embankments which were washed down should be repaired without delay. Therefore being without the desired funds, he begs to be allowed to retain for use certain moneys connected with the in tribute, which" he should rightly forward to the central government. The investigations made by officers on the memorialist's stuff have, so far, elicited the fact that in the districts in question there are as many as four hundred and ninety-two villages which have suffered from floods, to the extent that they have lost half their crops or more. The houses which have been flooded or washed down are two thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven, 'The sufferers, young and old together, are one hundred and nine thousand two hundred and eighty-fat souls, li of whom a in " nate of Month's food ati resides their Dokees' will pitiable misery. To give these lew
cost not less than Tls. 20,000. It should be state that these numbers are not complete as there are some districts where the investigations have not yet been carried out. Then there are' the breaches in the embankments, some of which must be repaired at once, and which it is proposed should be taken in hand as relief works. Taking everything together the memorialist finds that the unavoidable. expenditure cannot be less than Tls. 40,000 or 50,000. There is an annual sum of Tls. 40,000, formerly spent in grain transport expenses, but now regularly remitted to Peking, unless. permission be given to retain it for special needs. The memorialist begs leave to keep one year's receipts under this head and spend it in charity or relief works as above described.—Granted.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.