'A patrol of a dozen armed salt excise-men while in the vicinity of Woosung came across a band of salt smugglers es-carting a couple of boatloads of salt on the Ist instant, with the resut that the exciseman attempted to capture the salt and its escort. The inhabitants of the villages near-by sympathised, as is the case the world over, with the smugglers and came out in large numbers to assist in repelling the officers of the salt gabelle.
smart skirmish ensued and some of the excicemen using their firearms some of the villagers were wounded, which so enraged the latter that they fell on the soldiers and by mere force of numbers overpowered the party and allowed the smugglers and their cargo to escape the place. Seven exciseman were captured, the other five having thrown away their arms and fled the scene as soon as they saw that matters had become serious. The captives were eventually released, their uniforms, while five breech-loading but not before thes had been stripped of rifles and their accompaniment of cartridges, five flintlock gingals and a quantity of slugs and coarse gampowder end three swords became the spoil of the villagers and smugglers.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.