A few days previous tu this throw passage boats were returning to a place named Pakshik, and were anchored for the night at the mouth of a river, when pirates, numbering more than a hundred, attacked the three of them, robbed all the passengers, und carried off the throo captains to be held for ransom. A wealthy passenger was also carried off, but as he was more than sixty yours of ago, and could not walk fast, they slow him and threw his body into the river. For the release of each of the three captains throo hundred dollars wore do-manded. One of the captains was, however, recognised by one of the robbers, and the latter, uring the night, set the former free. Our author ys that in many places the robber ry hardly pressed. They can get but insufficient food and not enough clothing, and are exposed to all the rigours of the inhospitable climate of that rough distri enrolling of volunteers on all checked the bandits in many places, and where they once helped themselves to the pigs, the bullocks, and the poultry of the people, they are now perforce com-polled to content themselves with two meals each day, and they cannot always got good rice at these two meals, They are growing desperate.
The French Railway at Mengize.
Readers of the native papers have been informed that the French have entered into a contract with the Chinese Government, by which the former ure permitted to employ coolies for the contraction of thei ray. A recent letter to the editor of the Young Shing Times" says that the climate is very deadly, and therefore no one is willing to work on the line, for his life is really in danger. Last year two thousand men were enrolled from the Pakhor district, andin two months most of them had died. During the present year forty thousand have been employed from Tientsin, and of these already four thousand have died, and of the four thousand employed from this province more than four hundred have suooumbed.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.