The " Bostun Herald " says that the maxim "Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay" will now depend on the years chosen. So we might add; It will also'depend on the part of Cathay feferred to, In the sections 100 li east of Isuchowfu and east and southeast of Suchien, there are ' robber bands that number several hundred men each, These are supported by a large association of scattered malcontents, who prey on' the people. Blackmail is levied, and many are carried off and held for ransom, One of the most ruthless of their recent acts, was the capture of a small village, belonging to' a wealthy, Tsai, family. Merely because @ gun was fired in defence, (c.f. Louvain), the whole village was burned and seventy bodies of the slain were thrown into the stream, The wretches then put the bogie of the murdered men upon tables and put pipes and onions into their mouths! The wives of thirty-four Tsai men who were murdered been here in the family ancestral hall crying periodically for month, Scores of other villages hav" suffered most severely. And when soldiers can surround a village where robbers have taken refuge, woe betide the inhabitants!
Last Friday three—lieutenant led their companies into a village they supposed had been vacated by the tufei. They were proceeding in disorder when suddenly a heavy fire from an ambush disabled twelve and killed four outright. One can imagine what becomes of a soldier that falls into the hands of the robbers. So it is that when the robbers are caught a desire for revenge asserts itself, and the Jaw is executed (1) by a flaying or Tingch'é or a burning of the prisoner, as well as by the more humane and usual shooting.
It is surprising how quietly the people only a few miles from these scenes will reap and plant and sow.
The floods have sent.a great horde of poor refugees down the ' canal. landowners rich and villing the Famine prices are making the
poor. The wheat is well planted and is coming up-nicely. This has brought the prices down 15 per cent., which relieves the situation a little.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.