To gold-seckers, a taste for adventure ix second nature. All the same they do not nowadays look for exciting expetionses en the high seas, and Mr. JR. Duff, who has recently been prospecti behalf of. the Weihaiwei Gold Mining Syndicate and the Yangtze Valley Com pany, Ld., may therefore consider himself fortunate (or unfortunate, as the case may he) in having been aboard the ill-fated Enseigne Henri on her Inst voyage from Chefoo. A short account of the wreck appeared in our columns at the time of its Occurrence, but a representative of this journal has taken advantage of Mr. Duffs presence in Shanghai to obtain from hin a Imore personal account. The Enseigne Henri, whose loss the Chefoo Express" demuans as one of the few means of communication of Chefoo with the world, was quite a small st 1 of 250 tons, with a Chinese Captain.
ju. She belonged to Mr. Vernon of the Weihaiwei hotel and plied between Port Arthur, Chefoo, and Weihai under the French—flag. eft Chefoo al 0 0d on Europeans, including Mr. Duff, among the passengers.
"By six w'elock," said Mr. Duff, "there was blowing a tremendous gale of wind the Chinese Captain found himself quite helpless and that he had lost his way. decided, therefore, to turn the ship rourul and make back to Chefoo. At that tine we were about 10 miles from Weihai After running about an hour backward we broke a steampipe, and this, of course, left the ship quite at the mercy of the waves. It was very thick and dark about that time lowe were fon a very dangerous coast. We took sounding and found we had 15 fathoms, and then, in sheer desperation, we dropped anchor. 'Tt held on all night, though we were in expectation of its breaking. To give an idea how strong was the gale, 2 flight of geese was blown against' the window at Chefoo and shattered panes of glass. So we hung on h the dark, anxious night. the morning the gale i we passed the day the best way w "That night, to add to oar calamities, the engineer cheerfully reported that the ship had sprung a leak and would probably sink before morning. We hunted up an old pitinp and offered the crew $5 apiece to keep it going. After working about an hour the pump gave out; and the water was coming in pretty fast. Then the Chinese captain gave up all hope; he flung himself down on the deck in tears. By some fortune, the vessel kept afloat, and when the third morning broke the wind had moderated somewhat. We made up our minds accordingly to heave up the anchor and to put the ship under sail. Almost five or six miles away was a stretch of sandy beach and sooner than
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.