The port never saw so many different national flags in a short time as it has done within the last month, In addition to the Japanese, French, British, avd American men-of-war already noted, we count among our recent visitors a German vessel, the Tiger, and a Chinese gun-boat. This last is now employed in surveying the harbour and its approaches. The minds of the natives are exercised at seeing so many flags planted about the bay by the surveying party.
The Drought now threatens seriously the prospects of the spring rice crop. Up country the water the creeks is quite salt except where the people have constructed dams, preserving the water at the expense of the boat traffic. This last evil is recognised on all hands as a temporary, atid lesser one, and s0 provokes no recriminations. In some places the farmers sowed their seed last week in salt water. This treatment, they say, does not injure the sprouting paddy for the_irst week but after that rain must come, or disaster. The rain has not come, und the seed has perished in all like likelihood by this time.
Clan-Fights.
One of the less direct effects of the drought is the prevalence of clan-fights. Failure of the crops m+kes people irritable, and also gives them leisure to wipe out old grudges. In one region there ave been several deaths already, and the fighting seems only in it" beginnings. In another, a hundred vill: are divided into two parties, and it only requires the spark to set the whole countryside in a blaze. And this despite the fact that an Imperial Commissioner, with powers, is employed in pacifying the Swatow hinterland. He carries quiet wherever he goes, but takes it away with him on his departure.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.