Foreign troops are expected to-day in considerable numbers, from Tientsin, French and British. The British Minister is said to have received a cablegram from Lord Salisbury authorising the use of all the troops needed.
MISSION COLLEGE THREATENED, The North China Mission of the American Board has been holding its annual session in this city, and there have deen alarming rumours of an attack upon the city compound, as well as the College, which is situated in an open region south west of the city wall, and quite unprotected. There are nine gentlemen and twenty-five ladies and children, and only one rifle, two shot-guns, and a few revolvers for defence should worst come to worst. But the unlimited credulity of the Chinese is one of the strongest weapons of the foreigner. A small mounted telescope in the College grounds is supposed to be a swivel Maxim gun of deadly power, and the deepening of 4 well in a time of unprecedented drought has_given occasion for the report that the whole plice is mined with chemicals of an unlimited expacity to annihilate. At all events no armed forces have yet appeared, although. in response to repeated requests the Taotai has sent four men without their lethal bird-guns, some of the men being said to be themselves members of the I Ho-ch'aan. The exe.tement in Peking is intense.
30th May.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.