A correspondent recently back from Wusieh reports that the prospects of the silk season are now considered exceptionally good, provided there is no unfavourable break in the weather. This week the silkworms are about to perform their last sloughing and everybody is busy preparing the straw stooks in which the silkworms may "go up the mountain" and spin their cocoons. There is scarcely a house in Wusieh which is not busy with silkworms: the very schoolboys raise them in their desks, a much more interesting process than study. Wusieh generally presents a picture of great prosperity. The number of mills of all kinds is increasing amazingly. The land north of the railway is now being developed industrially and land that might have been bought a year or two ago for $300 mow now runs to as many thousands and more. One new departure is the dyeing and colouring mill which is being erected for a Chinese company by a Manchester firm of engineers whose representative is on the spot putting up the machinery. In spite of all its factory chimneys, Wusieh has lost none of its charm. It is, as ever a most attractive city, with no poor people (according to Chinese standards) except the professional beggars, who are certainly not poor. One is struck by the excellent repair in which the streets and roads out of the city are kept. The country round is charming and the crops are looking very healthy. Wusieh is, socially, a most interesting town. It is practically owned by a few big families who conduct a more or less patriarchal government wholly regardless of who pretends to reign in Peking, or even Nanking. And it is an unwritten law that whatever revolutions may rack the country nothing must interfere with the silk trade. Only once in the memory of man has a robbery of the silver sent to finance that trade been attempted. One gathers that it will not be tried again. Withal, bandits are not unknown and most farm houses outside the city bear on their walls the interlaced circles which show that they have paid toll for exemption from bandits' attentions.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.