No rain has fallen here for two months with the result that the woodwork of the houses is dry as tinder and when a fire starts it spreads rapidly. The Wesleyan Mission engine has been out four times lately, and there have been other small blazes. The first fire consumed the offices of the Japanese steamers. The agent deals in lamp oil as well as other things, and had apparently invested in some of the cheap and explosive kind. The fire was very fierce, but as the office is on the river bank the supply of water was. liberal.
The second was only a small conflagration, involving a few small houses, but the resultant" misery would be greater than when important. buildings are destroyed as the occupants of the small properties shave no reserves. The third blaze was on the main street and consumed five large shops and other buildings. Nothing was saved from three of the shops. The burning buildings were close to the pawnshop, but that important builting was saved. There was a high wind and the flames carried all before them till they came to the high, solid wall of a guild. The water carriers did well, but there was no cross street near and the men had to come through "mall passages. The Chinese certainly do not figure well at a fire. Each man in the crowd aims at getting a good view and the indifference to the need for a clear path for the water carriers is appalling.
The Inst blaze occurred about: midnight on the 92nd inst. and involved the premises originally erected by some Chinese merchants under the inspiration of Mr. B. 8. Little of Shanghai. but now let by them to the Chinese Imperial Tele graph Ca. The clerks managed to save the instruments. but everything else was consumed. The fire originated in an insense shop. 'The theory, and probably it is a correct one, is that' some one of the customers while smoking blew some tobacco ash into a backet. of incense dust. The ash would be buried with the force of its own weight and the incense would smoulder unnoticed for horim. When at Inst the fire reached the sides of the basket, they would at once burst into flame.
This enecession of fires has had one good result. The mandarins and gentry are considering whether they cannot organise the present: fire brigades on a different footing. There are four engines—all foreign-made—in_ the town. The hest is owned by the Wesleyan Mission, two others by the gentry and the fourth by a "Good Deeds" Hall. But there is no arrangement by which these engines can be sure of a proper supply of water. At one of the fires mentioned above there and the men i as of the other two was only enough water for two engines,
had simply to stand by idle.
The result of the last fire is that we are cut off from telegraphic communica-tiou wich the outside world. If we happen to need a doctor during the next few days we shall have to send a m up by.we steamer! In most lands first care of the telegraph officials would have been to re-establish communications. Here the operators took the first steamer off to Kiukiang to report in person on what had happened. And yet one cannot blamé~them, for local résourecs alf combined could not manage to put a telegraph line in order. Someone will have to be imported to do that.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.