A private letter from Kueihuachéng, Shansi, under date 11th April, states:
on are no doubt aware of the great distress among the Chinese of this place, due to the want of fuad. We have had no rain for the last two years and the result is " famine, T had an opportunity yesterday of enqu into the number of people who died in this city from starvation alone, In the Mavistrate's office it is reported as 10,000; In the country itis even worse. The Magistrate has only been able tu give help a w limited extent, and las supplied seed corn, If rain comes thers is hope for the survivors, We have received over is. 400 from different quarters for famine relief work, and in connection with that work, I have gone from village to village and can testify that the distress is real, In this plice there is an annual horse fair; th crime as usual, but of the market unfavourable, they turned their attention to women and girls whom they purchased and carried away in cxrtlands, most of the women being suld for a few hundred cash I know of one man who auld his two daughters for one sheng (pint) of millet. He boiled the millet and he and his wife ato it. but he died in couple of hours afterwards, In another cage, a man sold x young woman, hia wife, for 300 cash, out of which he paid 100 cash to the man' who wrote the deed of sula, and another 100 to a temple where the deed was registered. He died of starvation a few days afterwards, While I here are crowds at the door little help. While travelling through the villages, T have seen no better food than husks of grain and the bark of the elm tree ground together.
Computing up to the 21st April last From the various accounts before ux we find that somer! over Tls. 1,390,000 have so far been subscribed for the relief of the famine stricken districts of th Shansi, comprising seven departments and the prefecture of Ta tung Fu, This sum includes Tis, 50,000 from the Emperor's Privy Purse and is, 20,000 from that of the Empress Dowager, and the government aid 215,000 bags of rice valued at some Tls. 400,000, the reminder having been subscribed by the gentry and wealthy mer-different parte of the Empire, Of 2 of Kiangeu coman first 1 the list with Tle, 300,000; Chekiang 180,000; Chihli is, 150,000, and the balance ut Tis, 290,000 from the rest of the sixteen provinces, of which we must not tion Tls. 30,000 from Chinese that has now happened annals of Chinese and is due to the energy of T'xo Mu, the Governor of that province, The reason given for this universal call on the charity of the country is the urgent reports of the high provincial ofticera of Shansi and those of private charity distributors, who describe the present famine asin every way equal to, if not worse than, the horrible years of 1876-8 in the same province.
The Prefect's yamen la strongly guarded by soldiers. This step was made necessary by the report that four of the chief officers of the Kolao Hui were in the city, duter-mined to make a demonstrate Viceroy. The city is full of these grow so rapidly that i is difficult to Jearn just exactly whut is true. Law: abiding citizens, however, who have no sympathy with the Kolao Hui, say that there must be an end to these murders, that more than fifty people have been pat death who in all probability were innocent.
28th April.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.