Chinese officials who have been to Peking and have been received in audience by their Majesties agree in saying that the Empress Dowager is now quite different in appearance from what she used to be before the Boxer disturbances in 1900. She is said to have become so thin-faced and sallow in complexion that those who had seen her before scarcely recognised her. The, to her, unlucky collapse of "her friends and allies, the Boxers, and the heavy burden ea the Imperial exchequer imposed by the War Indemnity, which has proved a stumb-
and Javishness—of other people's mouey—ling block to her customary extravagance and the difficulty at the present of avenging what she calls her "wrongs" and the disgrace of the country upon her "barbaric" enemies of the West is said to have (so preyed upon her mind that loss of appetite and of sleep have made her what she ix.
Reported Recall of Ts'ai Chun.
Tt was rumoured in local mandarin circles on Saturday that, owing to the recent denunciatory memorial of the Censor Tsiang Shihchsin—note of which was made in these "Notes" that morning ELE. Ts'ai Chu", at present Chinese Minister to the Court of the Mikado, is to be recalled, und will probably be given some subordinate post in the Chinese Foreign Office in Peking when he returns, Ex-Viceroy K'uei and the Szechuan Boxers.
We have been courteously allowed to translate the following pare dispatch from Peking:—Ex-Viceroy K'uei Chun of Szechuan (who it will be remembered was removed the other day for apathy and capability in dealing with the Boxers in his province), upon receiving lately the Imperial lecree'appointing him Acting Tartar General of Chengtu, provincial capital of Szechuan, at once telegraphed the Grand Council reporting that the Boxers had become "quiet again," when as a matter of fact Boxerism was so flourishing and so bad on the day he sent his message that, according, to telegrams received from Chengtu and Chungking by Censors in Peking, who are natives of Szechuan, it was greatly feared that unless stern, repressive measures were at once started, Szechuan was on the high way to became a second Chihli and, probably, worse than in 1900. Of course the Boxers, in the absence of support from Manchus in Peking in the shape of friends and modern firearms, will in the end be suppressed.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.