The following dispatch has been received from Chungking:—It having been reported from Hsingwénhsien, a district near the Yuonan frontiers, that a large body of so-called Boxers had crossed that border into Szechuan, a force was at once sent to Hsingwenhisien to repel the invaders. A few days afterwards " couple of soldiers bearing dispatches from that city to the Major-General commanding Chungking Circuit, upon being interrogated by people, said that' when the Government troops came upon the Yunnan Boxers, who were entrenched, the head Boxer chief, accompanied by a bodyguard of a hundred men all dressed in black, well-clothed and well-armed, came forward to the Government camp and cried out to the soldiers that they were Bluck-flag veterans of Liu Yung-fu's Black-flag corps, who had been cruelly disbanded by the Government, unprovided for, and left to starve. Compelled by stress of circumstances they had no alternative except to join the Boxers. They themselves were armed with the newest magazine rifles and had smokeless powder ammunition. and dared the troops to attack them. But the leader warned the troops that after the Government had used them, they would surely be treated in the same way as the Bick-flags, and driven out to starve and die; he (the leader) therefore invited the troops to join and "have a time It is not stated what the officers of the troops did to the Boxer who was tampering with their men.
26th August.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.