The prolonged obs-nce of news regarding Captain Watts Jones, R. E., who was on a! mission in Chiva priv to the disturbances, wi caused his friends to fear the worst. The intimation which has now reached Peking, to the effect that the unfortunate offi. lias been slowly tortured to death west of Kalgan, appears to reveal dreadful certainty. A melancholy therefore attaches to one of the ages—possibly the very last—which ever reached the outside world from his pen. It took Use form of a statement on oath, and described the incidents of a wreck in which another Englishman was drowned, while Captain Watts Jones himself had a very narrow escape.
Captain Watts Jones was travelling in June last on the upper reaches of the Yellow River, in the province of Kansu. His companion was.ur. J. Grant Birch, an able engineer, who drew up the scheme for the desert railway from Wady Haifa to Abu Hamed, prior to the Dongola Expedition. Mr. Birch, who was fifty-three Fears of age, had gone to China in connection ith schemes for the construction ays along the Yangtzekiang. He by way of the Yellow River.
avallers were at Lanchou on Tune 2th, and chartered a raft to convey them to Chuugwei, farther down the river. The agreement was made with a Chinese pilot named Ma, with the aid of..r. Hunter, of the China Inland Mission. A hut was constructed on se raft for their accommodation, and on June 23rd they started.
The raft was about seventy feet long, and had a crew of only ten men. There were also ten Chinese passengers, who persisted in coming, although the raft, which carried a cargo of sheepskins, appeared overloaded.—At nightfall they tied up alongside the bank, and started off again at 4.30 next morning. During the night four of the crew disappeared, so that the hands available for working the raft became dangerously few. About four o'clock on the afternoon of the 24th Captain Watts Jones noticed the men at the bow oars rowing hard, and the pilot, helping them. He stood up and saw a rock about 200 yards ahead. He roused up Birch, who was asleep. Then he took a rope and began lashing his most important box to a log, but he saw the raft was bound to strike the rock, so he stopped, calling to Birch, "She'll break up." Birch, who was doing something with his kit, made no answer.
Directly afterwards the raft struck on the starboard side, just by the tent, and it once began to break up. The crew of the front oars were swept of at once and drowned, or more probably killed among the logs. Captain Watts Jones, with the Chinese passengers and the rest of the crew, scrambled on to the rock. He called to Birch, but there was no answer. When he looked from the rock the front part of the raft was a mass of whirling logs. He saw logs eighteen inches in diameter snap in two. Others were thrown up on end and fell over. The tent was gone, and all the kit, and there was no sign of Birch. He believed that Birch had delayed perhaps quarter of a minute to get a box, and in that time the raft broke up under him, so that he had no footing; or perhaps the tent came down on him. peat Had the raft had a larger crew, it mig have got safely past the obstruction. The stern part of the raft—the tent was forward—did not break up, and eventually' the castaways floated wown stream on the remnant. Captain Watts vones picked up one of his boxes, which was floating. It' contained a hundred taels, and at the next village he offered a reward for the recovery of Birch's body, without success. The raft was eventually rebuilt on smaller scale from the wreckage, and on June 26th he started again. On June 30th he reached Ningshia, where he found Mr.
tin and Mr. Frithiof Nystrom, of the nce Mission, to whom he handed over en statement, mane on oath, from which these facts are summarised.
It is pathetic to read at the close of the statement the following:—" That which I have written here is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and given here on oath to meet the possibility lof my being killed on the road between here and Peking.' The unfortunate officer's evident presentiment was terribly fulfilled. He never reached Peking.—"Times of India."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.