Soochow, Nov. 8.
Our local game season and local robber season usually open simultaneously. About three o'clock this morning, some four miles from where your correspondent spent last night, the robber season opened in full force, shall we say? Some hundred odd armed robbers held up the Shanghai-Huchow, China Merchants' launch and cleaned up the launch and her tow of everything valuable. There are many estimates as to the amount of booty the robbers made away with, but at all events it was quite a haul.
The launch was towing five boats, and a "gunboat" for protection. The protection, however, did not materialize for the robbers disarm-led the crew of the gunboat before they started to rob the passengers and the crews of the several boats.
In the past 15 years many launches on the Shanghai-Huchow run have been robbed at this spot, 'a very narrow canal connecting two lakes. It is also but four miles to the Chekiang line so that after the robbery the robbers melt away across. the Chekiang border, or take themselves out to one of the many islands in the Great Lake. The robbers usually have a confederate on the launch or the passenger barge. who is a passenger from Shanghai and who gives a signal to the robbers on shore as to whether the hold-up is worth while.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.