We have received the London and China Express" of the 4th damage done by the Ottawa fire is estimated at £12,000,000 sterling.—Mr. Conger, the U.S." Minister at P cables to the State Department at Washington to the effect that he has reason to rely upon the assurances given by the Chinese Government ay to the orders issued fur the full protection of foreigners in Shantung and elsewhere, The officials, under the direction of the Tsungli Yamen, have received instructions which leave them no loophole of escape from publishment if any outrage upon foreigners occurs in the provinces. editorial note in the Shanghai Recorder" says When the student of Chinese comes to a particularly ditiicult phrase or word, either his own language or in Chinese, it is a goud plan to give it no rest until some way has been found of transferring the id One of the toughest of the many knots perpetually presenting themselves to those who have occasion accurately to render ish terms into Chinese, is the group of rds condition," on condition that," "conditionally," "ete, When we meet them- we generally look them squarely in the face and then "go around them," ascalorsst into Chinese (although they can rightly judging that they simply cannot be
be).
This was the experience of an officer in the British Consular service: Having to conduct some delicate negotiations, in the course of which it was found (or imagined) that the high Chinese official concerned was likely to be influenced by the almost unceasing streen of telegrams detailing the successes of the Boers, on receipt of an important message giving a different turn to South African events it seemed desirable to let the Chinese know that General Cronje hid surrendered anconditionally." In order to avoid the embarrassment of turning this into Chinese, the telegram was shown to the official inter-prefer (" graduate of the Tung Wen Kuan Peking) with a request to pass it on in Chinese, which he did. Lhe next day.he was asked how he had rendered the word "unconditionally, " and the British officer was greatly edified to learn that the Grext Man had been told that General Cron} had surrendered wa yean wu hu ti other words, "for no Fexson whatever Tue following telegram dated Victoria the.17th ultimo, slows that the phigue is much worse in' Australig than we had of Sydney is in the midst of a most serious epidemic of bubonic plague. On the day that the steamer Aorangi, which arrived here this morning, left Sydney, eight cases were reported. Kor several days previous there had been three or four cases a day, and the whole city was concentrating its energies, as Honolulu did, to fight the disease. Up to April 25th there were LI cases of plague, with 52 deaths, Nearly all the victims are whites, only three among the lot being Chinese. There were 67 cases in the plague hospital on the 24th.
An interesting fact in connection with bacteriological work being done at Sydney {is the disco ery of bubonic-plague bacilli in the stomach of fleas. The discovery: wax made by Dr. Frank Tidwell, who had been investigating as to whether fleas may transmit the plague. Sydney is undergoing a great cleaning up. Thousands of tons of garbage have been destroyed and district after district isolated, while the inhabitants have been compelled to put their premises in proper condition. A. house-to-house inspection of the city has been made, and up to April 19th 11,550 premises had been examined and 1,576 of them condemned, as more or less requiring cleaning.
Despite all the efforts of the sanitary department to suppress the pest, new cases are reported from almost every seaport town in Australia, and even in the interior the dread disease is making its appearance under conditions which puzzle the plague experts. The Government has issued circular stating that mere cleansing of the towns will not suffice to stamp out the disease, which cannot be eradicated until all the plague-infected rats have been destroyed. Under an official rat catching army 1,200 rats have already been ins cinerated. The Government ix spending £30,000 monthly in the effort to free New South Wales from plague.
At a plague conference in Sydney where the governments of all Australian colony were represented it was decided that un form action should be taken to prevent the spread of the disease. The rules of the Venice plague conference were adopted. Regulations have also been adopted for compulsory inoculation with prophylactics, Tue following two notes are from the pectater " of the 14th of April:
The. "Montreal Daily Star" publishes in a recent issue a most interesting batch of letters from the Canadian soldiers at the front. They are animated by a most cordial spirit of good-fellowship towards their brothers-in-arms, and exhibit a truly Tapleyan capacity for cheerfulness amid trying conditions. One of them, deseribing the tattered condition of his shirt, adds that it is "very warm on one side another gives a truly humorous account of the various animal nuisances—including
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.