The number of Chinese prisoners is estimated by Major Pinger at 40, half of them being children between five and 12 years old. Several of them are merely living skeletons, wasted away by disease rather than by actual starvation. Some of them have been there over a year. All are filthy, unspeakably so, and are scabby and listless, sitting on their miserable straw beds all day as if their last hope had gone.
The foreigners would like to help them, but are afraid to do so for fear of the guard cutting down their normal supply of food, and also because of the danger of catching disease.
When the three were first sent up, they were placed in a building occupied by Chinese prisoners, but protests to the chief enabled them to be transferred to a dugout which was first cleaned out by the Chinese. The ventilation of the dugout is' good, and the prisoners are also' allowed to roam about the summit.
Major Pinger adds that there is plenty of soft soil at the top, and it is evident that the monks who formerly inhabited the mountain, cultivated a farm.
Other details which have reached the relief party show that a number of brigands and prisoners died during the siege-which was recently raised, and their graves are scattered about the top of Paotzeku.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.