This is the season of the year when the rural denizens of Shantung roll up their bedding and start off for the ends of the earth, vid Tientsin. For more than 150 miles from there to the boundary of the Chihli province the road present the arrangements for monthly payments to those have actually gone thither from here are in a most unsatisfactory state. No one can afford to make monthly trip.to such a distance as Tientsin, and already experience shows that for everyone willing to go to the mines, there are a dozen ready to step in and appropriate his pay to their own uses. Of course this is theoretically quite preventable, but at present it is not prevented, and perhaps is not preventable, in practice, but until it is, it seems quite safe to advise all inquirers to have nothing whatever to do with the most seductive schemes to send them abroad on the chance that friends in.the deep interior will profit by the venture.
The Great Storm of 15th January, which extended all over the northern provinces, and the effects of which have been felt avenin distant Kuangtung in killing the fish in the ponds (thus involving enormous lossing terms of money) was not in this part of China accompanied with © heavy snowfall. Curiously the depth of snow seems to have increased as one went south. Here there was " three fingers," while in the central provinces reports say that the amount might have been measured in feet. The ground is damp, and the prospect for a good wheat crop is reluctantly admitted by the farmers to be "fair." A slight "supplementary delivery" of snow took place on the 15th of February, all of which ad to the propitious outlook.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.