For some weeks the Chinese newspapers in Taiyuanfu have been printing accounts of a new type of motor engine soon to be put out.
Yesterday one of these motor engines arrived here, leaving this morning for points on the road to the southwest: The new machine is simply a coal-burning tractor engine. It isthe invention of the director of the provincial mint, who has the best engineering works in the province at his command. For constructing this tractor he is said to have received a reward of $3,000 from Governor Yen. The director of the mint is a returned student from England.
The tractor reached here drawing a "train" consisting of a truck piled high with bales of cloth and one passenger carriage. Judging at the rate of speed with which it proceeded this morning it will do well to make five miles an hour, although the newspapers have reported that it is capable of 20 miles an hour. Even at five miles an hour it represents an advance in speed over the ordinary Peking cart, though hardly up to that of a riesha.
On the 22nd and 23rd there was a fall of two or three inches of snow here, the second this winter. While coming too late to ward off the tremendous advance in the prices of foodstuffs, it will, at any rate. prevent the prices mounting higher for the present.
The shopkeepers are busy with their annual collections and settlements of accounts. Most of them report that the year's business has been, taking all the circumstances into consideration, fairly satisfactory.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.