From a' Correspondent.
Hupeh, June 27.
Famine Relief work has not wound up tamely after all, as at first seemed possible, Last night we had a battle of sorts, which is of interest as illustrating the curious workings of the Chinese mind. We had announced previously that we were going to settle up accounts, and that we should be proceeding downstream on the subsequent day, and pre sumably that is what fired the mine. Here is the sequence of affairs, as fax as one can sort them out.
In the first place if is necessary to explain that we had a signed and sealed contract for earthwork \with a Chinese contractor, in which time was limited to 20 days under penalty of a reduction of price of 100 cash per fong. The contractor duly arrived, and by the dates in his own account book we proved to him that he had taken four weeks over the work, and that his price would be cut, whereupon he re-talloted by a demand for an increase of 500 cash a fong instead. This, of course, was refused, but to ease matters, after some discussion, payment of the contract price without any deduction was offered.
By this time the contractor had about 20 of his coolies, or else outsiders looking for trouble, in the compound, all shouting at the top of their voices. Next he proceeded to grab me by the leg and refused to release me unless the full payment was immediately forthcoming.
Speaking in English, I inquired of a contractor up from Hankow, the only up-to-date one on the job, if he had any coolies he could trust, as we had considerable money in the compound, and things looked a little uncertain. He replied that he had warned his -men to stand by, having heard a threat of looting.
Next we detached the erring contractor from my leg, whereupon he shade an impassioned speech. in Chinese on the rights of man and the sanctity of labour, and then headed towards the door, the band promising in chorus to return and finish the Chinese engineer. For some reason they omitted my name, possibly thinking it a little too risky.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.