Amidst the general disintegration it is our good fortune to be able to announce that smother good mandarin (rara avis), has been found. "He and his kind must be relies left over from the balmy dass of Yao and Shun and seem strangely out of place in these degenerate days. The good gentleman of whom we speak rejoices in the name of Boar, (ff, and is magistrate of the Husiyuan district. He has been a raging bear to the rascals and bandits of his region and has devoured a good many of them. Travel is now comparatively safe on some routes that were, till recently, badly infested with bandits. "At one point some miles above Huaiyuan, on the Linsi river, an especially impudent gang conducted their calling to the terror of all the boat people. Afr. Bear took the field in person, with about a hundred soldiers. The bandits who seem to have beenallofone clan, surnamed Chang, defied the magistrate's force, fortifying themselves in a house and firing from the roof. Some soldiers were wounded and the sedan-chair in which Mr, Bear was riding was damaged with shot; Mr. Bear, however, urged his men on, offering a handsome reward for the heads of the enemy; the latter were eventually scattered and a number captured.or killed.
refreshing to know that there is mandarin brave enough to approach within gunshot ofan enemy. Affairs might have been much more serious for Mr. Bear had the robbers been armed as well as his soldiers were.
In addition to his bravery, our hero said to be a "clean" honest man, a tap CE, and he does not take bribes, favour the rich, and oppress the people as his predecessors usually did, His praises are on everybody's lips and for months banners have been displayed on the streets with complimentary inscriptions in his honour.
He has already been the happy recipient of an umbrella and a cent of the myriad-name variety, and doubtless when rooted with a new pair of boots, and hivlold he departs to other fields he will be pre-
ones put up to decorate a city gateway. There are at present no old boots nailed up on the gateways and this fact corroborates the statement of the people that, for twenty or thirty yeara, they have only had_one other good mandarin. What became of the boots of this former true " father-mother" of the people? It is hardly to be supposed that so time-honoured a custom as to nail up his boots on his departure would be neglected. It must be either thet the lapse of many years and the wear of the elements has destroyed them or perhaps some unworthy euccestor has had them furtively removed, not relishing these reminders that his own ways were not above reproach.
A FONDNESS FOR ANTIQUITIES, Of course, "the el is the best" in China asa rule; but one might suppose an exception could be made in favour of money—dollars, clean and new and genuine. Such is not the case in Northern Anhui; the dollar of the people is the old Spanish dollar, those in circulation are from eighty to one hundred and thirty years old or thereabouts and are indeed time-worn and much chopped. We have counted us many as fifty chops on one dollar. A few chops and a. generally antiquated appearance are needed in order to show that a coin is old enough to be respected. Mexican dollars and the modern Chinese dollars made at Nanking and elsewhere are at a sad discount, One can only get here seven to eight hundred large cash for a Mexican dollar, and that with difficulty, for the money-changers do not want them, while the Spanish dollar brings 1,150 cash and sometimes over 1,200. Many of the Spanish dollars, however, are becoming too much ora and chopped to be used, and the unhappy traveller who finds that' much of the money he has provided for the trip is below par and must be heavily discounted is prone to wish that the Spanish rule might end pines. The brass cash of the district are about as bad as the dollars, millions of tiny, spurious ones being in circulation which' will not weigh over 35 or 40 ounces, English, to the string of a thousand. As the proportion of these which may be mixed with large cash varies according to the commodity purchased and the whim of the seller, and as he who pays all large cash is sure to pay more than his purchase is worth, these small cash are a great nuisance even to the natives themselves. Much do we need a uniform, honest, modern money.
GRUESOME RELICS, Travelling in this district is attended with shocks and discomforts to a sensitive person, It is not pleasant to encounter an unburied body or grinning skull in a peaceful atrail along the river bank or to see a ghastly form drifting in the current. But disaster and death have been too common during the past months in Northern Anhui to admit of all the dead receiving decent burial. Our boatmen saw at least dozen bodies in the river on our trip on the Ko river, and doubtless the water weeds concealed far more that were past the float~ ig stage, to say nothing of the bones and hair, and torn rags cast from time to time ashore that told the same sad tale. Crime also adds its direct contribution %o the grim total. On the river bank below Linghuaikuan we saw a corpse; a closer approach showed that it was that of an adult, the ankles and wrists of which were crossed and tied and stone hung to the neck by a rope, The body was devoid of clothing, and a more loathsome object could hardly be imagined, We went on our way reflecting on the condition of aland where such evidences of crime could go unnoticed by people or officials. "Too numerous to mention" may perhaps be said of things that would strike a Western community with horror. Que of the most melancholy objects is the little roll of matting that shows where a child's body has been tied up and cast out on the shore.
a few minutes' walk along the jake-shore we saw at least half-a-dozen such. These times of distress cause a terrible mortality among the little ones. Poor old China But we are homeward-bound and ere long hope to have the relief of reaching the happy Yangtze Valley where the most of the people have something to eat and, asa rule, are able to bury their dead.
1st May.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.