'A person about 40. speaking the Ningpo dialect and giving hie surname as Tung, has been seen lately enlisting the service of coolies in the coast villages of Chuansha district. He had with him two or three assistants. He told the rustics that he was recruiting coolies by order of his superior officer, and that the coolies when shipped to Harbin and other foreign towne would be well paid. There were many countrymen who flocked to the quarters of this mysterious individual and offered their service. He formed them into batches of 25, saying he wanted between twenty and thirty such batches, He was on the point of sending away his first lot when the local gentry intervened, demanding to know the name of the agent's superior officer as he had termed his employer. As he would, or could, not give a satisfactory answer, the gentry laid a report before the prefect of Chuansha with the result that his recruiting activity was stopped, and a despatch was sent to the Taoyin of Shanghai informing him of the incident and recruiting Fe Chinese in the interior, which is in contravention of treaty.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.