Kikungshan never appeared to better advantage than it does at present. The Road Committee deserves the greatest possible praise for the care that all the public ways have received. A splendid new road winds in a level course along the eastern side of the Canadian Presbyterian Ridge (C. P. R. as it is locally known) to join up the elder community with the new Government concession. This new northern allotment is very rapidly being built up, and great care is being observed by the officials in charge that this end of the summer. resort does not fall behind those portions under the General Purposes Committee. The Government appropriated a parcel of several lots in this area for a cemetery: this has been walled in, well laid out in plots, surveyed in well marked roadways, and at. present presents a very tidy and pleasing appearance.
I am writing this letter to the accompaniment of hymn singing in the various barracks that surround the city to the east and south. I should suppose that in no other country in the world—I say, not in any other province in China, you note—can such a spectacle be seen as in this last of all the provinces to open its borders to the reception of Christianity. Morning and night the tunes of the favourite hymns are wafted over the city from all the encampments of Gen. Feng Vu-hsiang's soldiers. Your correspondent has seen companies of men drilling during the hot days of the early half of this month, when to relieve them for a time the captain in charge—and captains take charge of the drill of -their- companies in this Division—would order to ease under the shade of a tree, and the company would engage in Bible study.
This month has been one of conferences in the south suburb of the city. There was the annual Y. M. C. A. conference for the schools of the province: at the same time by no means a sinecure: so hard, indeed, is it that not infrequently there are desertions from the ranks. Great numbers of recruits are being mobilized throughout the province, and from the insistent drilling that they are receiving the time must soon be at hand that the bandit nuisance will be done away the province. This is an end much to be desired, for time since the infamous White Wolf has Honan so suffered from this pest as during the present year.
The dissolution of Chao Chieh's Ist Division sent great swarms of these hornets into the outlying districts to harass the poor country people, and many most pitiful tales have been recounted of the horrors suf2red. From the neighbourhood of Yhangtefu comes the story that a certain Li family was visited one nig] t by a band—not all ex-soldiers with 2x—and from reasons of unsatis d greed or vengeance they killed three male members of the family and, grasping a little child not yet a year old by the foot, one of the desperadoes dashed the innocent's brains out on the hard courtyard floor. These are the things that make it immediately imperative that the proper authorities deal with the whole evil.
There are cases of cholera in this city, and from the city of Kueiteh fu comes word that many cases ave reported. The Governoy and Mah Ko-chang, who has the medical work of the 11th Division under his care, are at present in Kueiteh, so I am informed, to look after this outbreak.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.