A daring and successful piracy was perpetrated a few days ago in broad daylight, in a narrow passage of one of the rivers, near Shuntak. A band of desperadoes had some time previously sent a letter to the captain of one of the large passenger boats that ply daily out of Canton and demanded a thousand dollars, as the price of immunity from the hands of pirates. He paid no attention to the infamous demand, but in order to make his position, as he thought, more secure, he requested the authorities to supply him with 'a guard of soldiers, and ten men were told off to protect his boat.
When the pirates learnt this they were enraged, and determined to weak their revenge. So, a few days ago, when the boat was passing through a narrow passage of the river at noon, the attack was made. The robbers planted about twenty men on either side of the river and fired a volley upon the passenger boat. Everybody was taken by surprise and everything was in confusion. The robbers aimed as far as they could at the soldiers, and it seems that the first volley killed three of the latter.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.