The country round Mienchu city has not been disturbed, although bands of the Hung-ten Hui (Red Lantera Society) collected in the district, but they marched away to join their friends to the south. The im tohave been chiefly occupied in "holding up" rich country houses, sometimes without murdering the inmates, at other times massacring the whole family (often comprising 130 or 200 persons) with great cruelty. The officials have been very active, and the approaches to the larger cities have been
cash the bushel, or newtly double the price well guarded by night and ed rice is 1250 ten years ago. As wages and incomes have not risen proportionately (query, followed the fall in silver?) the people, of whom ninety-nine pee cant live from' hand to mouth, are in a bad way and trade is more or less stagnant, The City of Mienchu is situated to the north of the capital some sixty miles, and at the foot of the "Blue Wail" range, the snowy peaked mountains that shelter the Chengtu plain on the north and west. The alternation of drought and floods that we are constantly witnessing here, and which characterises all Western China, is due to the cruel deforestation of the mountain tops all of which, not a hundred years back, were covered with forests of magnificent trees, cedars. Salis-buna, the' "soap" and Hvangko trees, fine specimens of which are fortunately' still preserved by the Buddhist priests, whose temples are scattered throughout these
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.