This town, which is the prefectural city of the Kianysu province, though the Paotii does not live here, but at Shanghai, the latter being the more important city, is called Soongkong, or the "Pine River," by the natives, and ona first acquaintance with the hive one is inclined to think that the principal products ave cruss and graves, for 1 numbers. "Having landed way place, we find it necessny tot some distance before we get on the city side of the creek, but we soon come upon young nun using a foreign sewing chine,—we see some more of these inter on—and he asks us if we intend calling upon Mr, Bu, Although we h: not the slightest idea who Mr. Bu is, we Weill yo and see hint, and ask the youth to direct us. His directions are explicit and we discover the place without ditliculty, though tomake sure that the Chinese looking building is Mr, Bu's, we enquire of a native. is fortunate we find it so quickly for while we are knocking at the gate the due notice of the approach of which had been given us by a rainbow early in. the mornitig, cones down in torrents. We go into the chapel, for Mr. Bu, we learn, is the Rev, Mr, Burke, who isin charge of a branch of the American Methodist Hpi pal Mission, (South) at Soongkong the only missionary, besides his wife, in th place, However, "Mr, Burke is not at home; he has gone to Shanghai and we me told he will not return till a couple of days later. This does not prevent our accepting the invitation of the servants to come in out of the rain, but we have not been under shelter long before another servant brings us the news that the missionary has returned. Having introduced ourselves and apologised for aking his place by—and in a rain—storm, he invites us to stay till the rain holds off, We remain talking of things in general and Soongkong in particular for upwards of an hour and after having changed our minds several times according to the condition of the weather, finally accept Mr. Burke's offer to show us the sights. There is a school attached to the Mission, and during half the day the twenty pupils learn the Chinese Classis, and the rest of the day literature supplied by the Mission.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.