From Our Own Connesronvewr, Siangtan, Hu,, Nov. 6.
There seems to be feverish tivity here among the milit There has not been such intense drill here for a long time, No one seems to know the reason for it, but rumour has it that trouble is brewing for the Military Governor, Chao Hong-ti. Now that Ma Chi has withdrawn his troops to the North again, of course Chao Hengti is not as safe in his military governorship as he was. There is no doubt but that the people here would be glad of something to take the soldiers away. They are helping to make a bad year worse by their doings.
The one item of coal one is enough to wish them gone. They have persistently meddled with the coul situation until there is almost 'a famine of coal and prices are exorbitant. Good coal is nearly one dollar a picul. In the first place the likin on coal which is supposed be only 80 cents per hundred piculs is 90 fixed now that the boat men have to pay from five to 10 times that amount. A boatman recently told the writer that he had 90 piculs of cou! on board and when hho came to pay his likin they taxed him for 700 piculs. He protest-fed but without success. This is the Jgommon method. A boat with two hundred piculs is charged for a thousand or more and there is no redress, This has all been pointed out to Changsha but nothing has been done about it.
The Lei Yang or Lei River coal {is the coal used here and is almost impossible to get als because the soldiers here will come to a boat, take off under armed guards all they want and pay only a fraction of the cost and sell it again, thereby making a neat profit. ' This has so alarmed the coal boats that they do not stop here and it is seldom thata boat that hus not been protected by some method, will consent to sell to local merchants. The compete da foreigner 30 Presbyterian institutions have been
up the river to sit on the boats and stay until it is unloaded, One forgot a boat load ud unloaded part of it and wen: off to dinner. While he was away the soldiers came and took several Toads and paid only half, or less, the cost of the coal Rice is the only cheap commodity on the market these days. On account of the floods no rice is being exported and since there was a con siderable amount of old rice left over and the second planting coming in well, rice is going down The country people are hit hard in this way and together with the losses by the past summer's floods it is causing a good deal of suffering.
The 20-cash piece is going down and so the prices of com-ought to go up. A dollar exchanges now for nearly 2,800 and the merchants predict that it will soon go to 3,000 cash for the dollar.
The new road between Siangtan and Hsiang Hsiang has been opened to rieshas, but the autos have not yet arrived. The ricsha goes in a day for about one dollar and the return is a Kittle less. This considerably less than the chair cost for two men,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.